The Indian team have played two T20I bilateral series without Virat Kohli after the T20 World Cup last year. Even after scoring 296 runs in six matches in the T20 World Cup, Virat Kohli's position in T20I is still under scrutiny. He got half-centuries in four of those games. People have started questioning Kohli's absence from the T20I squad now.
In the pre-match press conference ahead of India's third ODI against New Zealand, the same question once again got raised to Rahul Dravid.
Dravid said, "There are certain priorities we need to give to certain white-ball tournaments at particular stages of time. The amount of cricket we are playing…the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the World Test Championship, potential qualification, important games for qualification perspective for us. There are certain white-ball tournaments that we had to prioritise, the priority after the T20 World Cup has been these six games.
"As you've seen, Virat has played all these six games. He'll get a bit of a break along with Rohit and 1 or 2 other guys in the next week while we play some T20I cricket. And they come refreshed on the 2nd and we have a good week's camp before we play Australia. So yeah it's just priorities. We have to prioritise certain formats."
India will be playing against New Zealand in the final ODI of a three-match series on Tuesday. The Rohit Sharma-led side has already taken a 2-0 lead in the series.
Squads: