Having opened with Rohit Sharma in the fifth T20I against England and added a 94-run stand that laid the platform for India's series victory, Virat Kohli said he would definitely like to partner with his deputy at the top going forward.

Kohli's decision to move up the order was taken so than extra bowler could fit in. T Natarajan came into the eleven for the deciding T20I - which meant that KL Rahul had to make way. The move paid rich dividends as India posted a sizeable total of 224, with Kohli taking his usual wait-and-then-attack approach while the other batsmen were liberal with their strokeplay.

Kohli scored 22 off 20 in the partnership with Rohit and then added 49 with Suryakumar Yadav, who came in at number three and struck a quick-fire 32 off 17 to ensure that India made good progress in the middle part of their innings. Kohli, who had scored 39 off 29 when Suryakumar was dismissed in the 14th over, raced to 80* off 52 in an 81-run association with Hardik Pandya.

Having tried three different opening combinations before this game, Kohli's promotion to the top, Suryakumar providing the firepower at three, and the likes of Hardik, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant in the middle order, have given India a viable recourse for setting good totals in the 20-over format, which they found challenging earlier in the series.

But Rohit doesn't want to read too much into the tactics that worked well for India, insisting that the batting order for the team isn't set in stone and that this doesn't send out any signals in terms of preferred personnel for the T20 WC that will get underway in October. Rohit also came to the defence of Rahul, mentioning that his omission for this game after a run of low scores doesn't take away the fact that he remains one of the key players in India's limited-overs set-up.

"It's still a long time for the World Cup, so (it's) early days to talk about what the batting line up would be looking like. We just have to analyse and think about what suits the team the most. Today was a tactical move because we wanted an extra bowler to play. We had to leave one batsman out, unfortunately it was KL, which was very tough.

"KL, we know he's been one of our key players in the limited-overs format. Looking at the current form the team management decided to go with the best eleven. But having said that it doesn't send any signal, that KL would not be considered or anything like that. It was just for one particular game," Rohit said during the online media conference following the fifth T20I.

"As and when we get closer to the World Cup, we do understand his ability, we do understand his contribution at the top, what he's done for us. I'm not going to rule out anything, neither would I say this is the preferred batting line-up for the World Cup. It's still early days, we've got a good amount of time. There's the IPL in between, and I'm hearing that there'll be a few T20Is as well before the World Cup. So good enough time for us, at that point to judge what would be the best eleven for us.

"What I wanted to say is, not to judge on what has