India team for upcoming T20I series vs Afghanistan has been announced and Rohit Sharma will lead a strong squad also featuring Virat Kohli. Both Rohit and Virat last featured in a T20I fixture during the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
The experienced pair played only the IPL in between and were either rested or asked for rest for the 22 T20Is India played since the semi-final defeat to England in Adelaide on November 10, 2022. In their absence, plenty of young players, who had been consistent in the Indian Premier League, were given opportunities and the likes of Yashaswi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh and Jitesh Sharma gave good account of their skills in the chances which came their way.
Right after the T20 World Cup, there were loud calls of changing the look of the T20I side and having a unit which is fearless from the word go. The fearlessness was on display when these young boys featured in numerous bilateral fixtures and now going back to Rohit and Virat undoes the work put in by the youngsters for more than a year.
The squad was beginning to take shape with Jaiswal, Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Ishan Kishan at top of the order, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Tilak Varma in the middle-order and Jitesh Sharma, Rinku Singh as your finishers.
Now with Rohit and Virat returning to the set-up, the balance goes for a toss and it will be a return to the old days. The days where India fell short in two back-to-back T20 World Cups. The days intent wasn’t seen in the way we batted in the two editions. It was after those two tournaments that calls for getting young blood grew even louder.
In the 2022 edition, Kohli scored 296 runs at a strike-rate of 136.4 while Rohit scored 116 runs at a strike-rate of 106.42. In the 2021 T20 World Cup, Virat scored 68 runs at a strike-rate of 100 and Rohit had 174 runs at a healthy strike-rate of 151.3. The last season of IPL saw both the players in action and Virat had a decent year with 639 runs at a strike-rate of 139.82 but Rohit could only manage 332 runs at a strike rate of 132.80.
Both Rohit and Virat had phenomenal World Cups but did the selectors get convinced for T20Is by seeing the veterans perform in 50-over format? If that is the case, are we going to see more selections like this?
The squad for Afghanistan series has raised a lot of pertinent questions and the same old story is likely to roll out if the same bunch is persisted for the T20 World Cup in West Indies and USA.
The series gets underway in Mohali on January 11 and concludes with the third and final T20I in Bengaluru on January 17. After the T20I series ends, focus will shift to preparations for five-Test series against England which begins in Hyderabad on January 25.
Notable omissions from the 16-member T20I squad are Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav and Ruturaj Gaikwad. As CricketNext had reported earlier, Pandya is on a NCA (National Cricket Academy) high-performance programme and will directly play the Indian Premier League. Both Surya and Gaikwad are yet to recover from ankle and finger injury respectively.
Also missing from the squad are Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer. Additionally, there was no place for Yuzvendra Chahal as men’s senior selection committee went ahead with Ravi Bishnoi and Kuldeep Yadav as the two wrist spinners.
India squad: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar
Afghanistan squad: Ibrahim Zadran (C), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (WK), Ikram Alikhil (WK), Hazratullah Zazai, Rahmat Shah, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi, Karim Janat, Azmaullah Omarzai, Sharafuddin Ashraf, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Fazal Haq Farooqi, Fareed Ahmad, Naveen Ul Haq, Noor Ahmad, Mohammad Saleem, Qais Ahmad, Gulbadin Naib and Rashid Khan
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