Auckland, Nov 3 (IANS) New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner hopes to keep Indian stalwarts Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma quiet throughout the upcoming five-match ODI series, which kicks off at Eden Park on Wednesday.

The buzz around Kohli and Rohit has been there ever since they landed in New Zealand. Visuals of the two practising side-by-side have also gone viral on social media, and as the two are in form, New Zealand want to keep them quiet in what is a crucial series for the two teams in terms of preparations for the ODI World Cup 2027.

"Yeah, I guess we would try to stop them pretty early in every game, ideally," Santner said in the pre-match press conference. "But yeah, we've seen the top order of India for a long time. Rohit and Kohli have done it for a long time. Their role is to go pretty hard at the top and then set up a good score in the middle and then let their power kind of come in at the end," he added.

The New Zealand captain hopes there will be help on the surface for the seamers to stop the duo. "So, I think if it does a little bit, it kind of brings the seamers back into the game a little bit. But when we've seen it's flat, it's how do we stop the likes of those guys? Yeah, and it might be, I think we've gone away from kind of seeing that 250-260 score being par in one-day cricket," he said.

Santner also expects the crowd to fill the stadiums in numbers, with Kohli and Rohit set to feature in the series, and heaped praise on the two for doing well despite being in their late 30s. "As we've seen throughout the T20 series, we've had some really good crowds, and I expect they'll be the same with Rohit and Virat being here.

"We know how good they are. I guess they're getting old, but they are still playing very well. We saw it against the West Indies. I've seen it for a long time. I've seen Rohit in the IPL as well. We've obviously sat down as a bowling group and discussed what their line-up looks like, how to operate in New Zealand, which I guess we know how to operate on these pitches. But when it's doing a bit, what does it look like, and when it's flat, what does that look like as well?" he added.

--IANS

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