Star Indian batsman Virat Kohli will miss the first of three T20 Internationals against Afghanistan due to \u201cpersonal reasons\u201d, coach Rahul Dravid said on Wednesday.Kohli and skipper Rohit Sharma both returned to the T20 squad after more than a year\u2019s absence for the series starting on Thursday in Mohali, as the teams prepare for the T20 World Cup in June. \u201cVirat will miss the first game due to personal reasons,\u201d Dravid said at a press conference. \u201cHe will be playing from the second and third T20.\u201d Kohli and Rohit last played a T20 International in November 2022, when India lost to England in the semi-final of the T20 World Cup in Australia. The second T20 will be played in Indore on Sunday with the final match in Bengaluru on Jan 17. Meanwhile, Afgha\u00adnistan skipper Ibrahim Zadran said leg-spinner Rashid Khan will miss the T20 series against India due to an injury, but added that the tourists have plenty of experience in reserve. Rashid, a bowler with 347 international wickets across formats, underwent lower-back surgery in November but remains part of the travelling squad which will play the opener on Thursday. \u201cHe is not totally fit [but] he is travelling with the team. We hope he gets fit soon,\u201d Zadran told reporters. \u201cWithout Rashid we will struggle but not that much. His experience is important for us but this is cricket, you should be ready for any kind of situation.\u201d Rashid, 25, is a pillar of a world-class Afghan spin attack that also includes Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Noor Ahmad and Mohammad Nabi. \u201cPlaying against India on their home soil is a difficult task, but we came here to play well against them and show our skills,\u201d said Zadran. \u201cWe have lots of good T20 players, all our boys are playing good cricket, so I am sure they will play well.\u201d The cricketing minnows put up an impressive show in last year\u2019s ODI World Cup in India with victories over England, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands. Zadran, a 22-year-old opening batsman, said fans\u2019 added expectations will motivate the team to elevate their performance. \u201cNot only Afghanistan people are expecting lots of things, but all around the people are expecting [a] lot of things from us nowadays, because we played a wonderful World Cup,\u201d he said. Zadran said the team hoped to \u201cplay positive cricket and show our skills on the field\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Star Indian batsman Virat Kohli will miss the first of three T20 Internationals against Afghanistan due to \u201cpersonal reasons\u201d, coach Rahul Dravid said on Wednesday.Kohli…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13048,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}