Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah on Wednesday said that he spoke with former skipper MS Dhoni on being the mentor for the upcoming T20 World Cup and the current team management is on the same page about the decision.
The All-India Senior Selection Committee met on Wednesday to pick the squad for the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup to be hosted by the BCCI from October 17 to November 14 in the UAE and Oman.
In a surprise move, R Ashwin has been included in the team which will begin its campaign in the showpiece event against arch-rivals Pakistan. He had last played a T20I against West Indies in July 2017. Yuzvendra Chahal misses out as MS Dhoni will be the mentor of the team. “So as far as MS Dhoni is concerned, I spoke to him when I was in Dubai so he was okay with the decision and he agreed to be the team mentor for T20 World Cup only. I discussed this particular issue with my colleagues also, they are all on the same page,” said Shah during a virtual press conference.
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“I spoke to captain and vice-captain as well as head coach Ravi Shastri, they all are on the same page so that is why we reached a conclusion,” he added. Team India chief selector Chetan Sharma also explained the reason why no left-arm pacer was named in the squad.
“Every time there is a thing on the mind of the selectors that you need to have variation, but at the end of the day, the wickets in the UAE will be slower so the selectors decided on three fast-bowlers with Hardik Pandya as the fourth pacer. Even if we wanted to have a left-arm seamer, we would not have been able to fix him in the squad,” said Chetan Sharma while replying to an ANI query. “T Natarajan was discussed but he has not played cricket for a long time, he is on the injury list and that is the reason we stuck to the main guys which are our strike bowlers,” he added.
India squad: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, R Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rahul Chahar, Varun, Mohammed Shami, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishan Kishan. Stand-byes: Shreyas Iyer, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur. (ANI)
