The focus is now on Indian legends Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma as the India national cricket team and the New Zealand national cricket team prepare for a gruelling 5-match ODI series. Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will bring the form they showed in the home ODI series against West Indies a few weeks ago to their matches against New Zealand

Ahead of the first ODI of the ongoing bilateral series, the New Zealand skipper, Mitchell Santner, was asked how they will plan to stop the star batter duo from creating havoc against them.

Mitchell Santner opens up on Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli

Mitchell Santner mentioned that despite their ages, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are still doing well for Team India, and they did well against the West Indies as well. Santner witnessed Rohit's batting in the Indian Premier League as well.

In the ODI series against West Indies, Rohit scored a century in Guwahati and missed another century by eight runs in New Chandigarh. On the other side, Virat Kohli played an unbeaten 139-run knock in Thiruvananthapuram against the same opponent in September.

“They’re getting on, but they’re still playing very well. We saw it in the last series against the West Indies. I’ve seen it for a long time. I’ve seen Rohit in the IPL as well,” Mitchell Santner said at the press conference.

Mitchell Santner explains the batting roles of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli

Santner reckoned that the roles of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are going to be pretty tough, as their roles will not be limited only to India's top batting order. If any of them sets the tone early in the game, then it can allow the rest of the batters down in the batting order to score runs fluently.

“Their role is to go pretty hard at the top and then set up a good score in the middle and let their power come in at the end. Rohit, obviously, and Kohli have done it for a long time. Shubman has been outstanding as well for the last five years,” he added.

On SENA nations, teams mostly prefer to deliver surprising bouncers to dismantle the rhythm of the subcontinent batters. Mitchell Santner noted that many bowlers had tried short-pitched deliveries against Rohit, but 'Hitman' knows how to answer those. In New Zealand, the former Team India skipper's batting average is 35.7 while Virat averages 46.

"Teams have tried to go short at Rohit before, but he hits those for six now,” the New Zealand captain said.

Along with the batters and bowlers of each team, the different playing conditions and different nature of pitches make an ODI contest more interesting in New Zealand. The uncertainty could cause more trouble for the Kiwi bowlers against two Indian stalwarts.

"If the pitch offers more than the other night, can you do it for a long period of time and challenge the batter? And then if it’s flat, how do we change? What does it look like? Subtle field changes. But I think there aren’t too many secrets with ODI cricket with bowling," added Santner.