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Cricket PlayersIndia pick uncapped leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi for limited-overs series vs Windies
Skipper Rohit Sharma and chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav are back, R Ashwin has been dropped while Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami have been rested for next month’s ODI and T20I series.
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Rohit Sharma is back after regaining fitness from injury that ruled him out of the recent South Africa tour and will lead India in the one-day and T20 series against West Indies starting on February 6.
After a marathon meeting on Wednesday following the debacle in South Africa, the Chetan Sharma-led national selection committee made quite a few changes before announcing the two squads.
It picked young Rajasthan leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi on the back of his promising show in the Indian Premier League; chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav made a comeback into the one-day side, having also undergone knee surgery in September last year. Among other big changes in the ODI team, Washington Sundar came in place of senior Tamil Nadu counterpart R Ashwin, who was also left out of the T20 squad to at least temporarily halt his return to white-ball cricket for India.
Sundar proved fitness in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, but was ruled out of the South Africa ODIs after testing positive for Covid. The experiment to groom Venkatesh Iyer as all-rounder has been shelved. He is only in the T20 squad. Middle-order batsman Deepak Hooda, a finisher in IPL, and pacer Avesh Khan have been called up. Mohammed Siraj is also back after injury sidelined him during the South Africa Tests.
All the series from here on are crucial for India to find the right combination for the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia and the 2023 ODI World Cup at home.
All-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, who missed the South Africa series due to knee injury, will miss the Windies games as he undergoes his final stage of recovery.
Pace spearheads Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammad Shami have been rested. KL Rahul, who led India in the SA ODIs, will be available from the second ODI onwards.
Pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been dropped for the ODIs but retained in the T20I side. 2021 IPL’s highest wicket-taker, Harshal Patel, has been rewarded with a place in the T20 team.
Rohit Sharma missed the South Africa tour due to a hamstring injury. The selection committee asked him to work on regaining full fitness instead of playing the limited-overs series. India badly missed his batting and leadership, losing all three one-dayers.
Ahead of the SA series chief selector Sharma had said they will not take any chance with player fitness. “We want him to work on his fitness, work on his muscles, the main reason is that we have the T20 World Cup coming up and we had a good chat with Sharma and that is the reason he is not going to South Africa for the ODIs. We always think if he’s 100 per cent fit then he should not miss an important series,” Sharma had said.
The backing of KL Rahul seems to have helped leg-spinner Bishnoi. He has been one of the finds of the IPL for Punjab Kings and has been picked by new franchise Lucknow Supergiants.
Bishnoi was impressive in the 2021 IPL where a majority of his 12 victims in his nine games were top-order batsmen, including Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni, Suryakumar Yadav (twice), Ishan Kishan, Rahul Tripathi and Venkatesh Iyer. A bowler who loves a challenge, Bishnoi had an economy rate of 6.39.
“He has a lot of fight in him. That’s something that stood out from the first game of the IPL that he played, coming off an under-19 World Cup. IPL is a big stage and it didn’t seem like the occasion got the better of him,” Rahul was quoted as saying by a leading daily. “He can be the next big thing in Indian cricket. The responsibility is on us to help him discover his potential so he can get into that national team and become one of the key spinners for India,” he said.
It is a big break for Kuldeep Yadav too. After enjoying heady success under Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri, he lost the plot and place in the limited-overs side. It is learnt that captain Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid want to try him out because if he succeeds they will have a potent spin weapon. Yadav last played ODIs and T20Is in Sri Lanka in July, where Dravid was coach.
The six-match series against West Indies will feature three ODIs starting in Ahmedabad on February 6. The T20Is will be played in Kolkata from February 16.
