T20 World Cup: Jasprit Bumrah, Harshal Patel back as Arshdeep Singh retains spot
New Delhi, September 12
Fit-again pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah and death overs specialist Harshal Patel were back in the team as the national selection committee didn’t spring any surprise in the 15-member India squad for the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia, which starts on October 16.
India will play their first match against Pakistan in Melbourne on October 23.
Bumrah, who was suffering from a back injury, and Patel, who had a side strain, had done an intense rehabilitation programme at the National Cricket Academy and the BCCI medical team has deemed them fit for the marquee event.
The two players who didn’t make the squad are pacer Avesh Khan and leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi, who was pipped by senior off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin.
With Patel fit and available, there was very little chance for Khan to make it, especially with a late-overs economy rate of 18 in recent times.
If there was one player who would feel hard done by, it would be Bishnoi. He was fantastic against Pakistan in the Super 4s game of the Asia Cup, where he had outshone senior wrist-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal.
While Chahal was an automatic choice, Bishnoi’s fight was always for the third spinner’s slot with Ashwin.
Obviously, two leg-spinners wouldn’t have added variation to the attack but Ashwin’s presence on the big Australian grounds and his ability to take the ball away from the left-handers got precedence.
Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka (likely qualifier in India’s group) all have a couple of left-handers in the top-five and if Ashwin is played against them, he can try to exploit that.
Veteran pacer Mohammed Shami was back in the T20 scheme of things as he has been picked for the T20 series versus Australia and South Africa, to be played before the World Cup. He is also among the four stand-bys who will travel Down Under. Shami wasn’t directly picked as he hasn’t played any cricket after England series and the upcoming six T20Is will give Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma chance to check out his rhythm and bowling at the death.
The batting unit, which hasn’t performed up to the expectations on big days, more or less remained the same. In fact, there aren’t any new faces since last year’s T20 World Cup except Deepak Hooda, who won’t always be an automatic first XI player. — PTI
Squad
Rohit Sharma (captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicketkeeper), Hardik Pandya, R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh. Stand-by players: Mohd Shami, Shreyas Iyer, Ravi Bishnoi, Deepak Chahar.
