While Sourav Ganguly and Sunil Gavaskar applauded Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s return to the Indian T20I team, Deep Dasgupta criticized the BCCI for a “directionless” move. Since India’s 2022 World Cup semifinal matchup against England, both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have missed T20Is.
As the two contemporary icons concentrated on the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup, India developed a group of youthful players who had just turned in outstanding performances in the 2023 IPL season.
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In the 16 Twenty20 International games that followed the Indian Premier League last year, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Jitesh Sharma rose to prominence. This created a difficult situation for team management and selectors as they had to make decisions for each game and series while considering the players already involved in the T20 World Cup.
The future of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in T20Is, as well as the selectors’ intentions to choose them for the World Cup in June, were hot topics of discussion. The two seasoned cricket players’ wait came to an end on Sunday night when the Ajit Agarkar-led BCCI selection committee decided to bring them back for the three-match T20I series against Afghanistan, thereby ensuring their inclusion in the T20 World Cup squad.
Deep Dasgupta slams Ajit Agarkar
Deep Dasgupta indicated that the Indian batting order would essentially stay the same as it did in the semifinal match against England in the 2022 T20 World Cup.
Deep Dasgupta also believed that Rinku, who proved to be a breakthrough for the team down the order as a finisher, might not make the starting XI with India returning to Kohli and Rohit and with the injured Hardik Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav guaranteed to be in the World Cup squad. Rinku scored 262 runs at a strike rate of 180 with a boundary every 3.6 balls in 12 T20I matches for India.
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“I was slightly surprised because I thought the team had moved on from Rohit and Kohli. The main criticism was the lack of intent from the senior players in the last T20 World Cup. But then again, you need to keep in mind the kind of tracks you are expecting in the West Indies – are you expecting a 180 or 200-run wicket to 160-ish kind of tracks? To be very honest, I do not find any direction here for India in the last one year. If they had to go back to Kohli and Rohit…given the squads we had in the last one year, it is like going back to square one,” Deep Dasgupta said.
“If you look at the team India had against England (in 2022 T20 World Cup semifinal) and the one against Australia recently, Hardik, Jadeja and Bumrah and Siraj will be back, but the middle-order will remain the same. Kohli will play at No. 3, Surya at 4, Hardik at 5, Jitesh or Samson at 6, then Jadeja and the rest follow. So there won’t be any difference in that middle-order finisher role,” Deep Dasgupta further said.
