India needed to make a couple of tough calls regarding their playing XI against Pakistan in their Super 12 group match of the T20 World Cup 2022, the mega-clash at the MCG.
One in the pace department: senior pacer Mohammed Shami, who although hadn’t played a single T20I since last year’s T20 World Cup, was chosen over death-overs specialist and lower-order hitter, but out-of-form Harshal Patel. The other was in the spin department: India went with off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin over leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal.
India skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to field first.
Here are the two teams:
Pakistan (Playing XI): Babar Azam(c), Mohammad Rizwan(w), Shan Masood, Haider Ali, Mohammad Nawaz, Shadab Khan, Iftikhar Ahmed, Asif Ali, Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf, Naseem Shah
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik(w), Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh
Here are the reasons why India went with R Ashwin instead of Yuzvendra Chahal:
While many fans had been wanting Ashwin’s inclusion in the XI over Chahal, they weren’t sound if India would want to leave out their premier leg-spinner. But, India did. And there’s a healthy justification to their choices, most of which doesn’t have to do with Chahal himself as much as it is to with Ashwin’s skillset and the opposition’s batters.
First and foremost, India need to tie down and remove Pakistan’s two best and in-form batters: their openers – Babar and Rizwan.
It is quite a remarkable fact that both are high-quality, class-oozing, and experienced right-handed batsmen, but they haven’t been able to take down off-spinners in the way one would expect them to.
In T20Is in 2021, Babar had a strike rate of only 80 while facing right-arm off-spinners and in 2022, it has increased, but only to 114, and he’s been dismissed 4 times in 10 T20I innings to off-spinners this year. Rizwan’s numbers aren’t ideal either to off-spinners: strike rate of 112 in T20Is this year when playing off-spinners and it was 103 last year.
So apparently, the plan for India against these two could be to have Ashwin tie them down and rotate the fast bowlers from the other end to topple one or both of the two Pakistani stalwarts.
The other reason for Ashwin’s inclusion in the XI is clearly visible in Pakistan’s line-up: they have two left-handers – Shan Masood and Nawaz – in their top 5. So Ashwin’s off-spin would be a favorable match-up against those two left-handers. Hence, as mentioned earlier, the selection of Ashwin over Chahal has more to do with what Ashwin brings to the table, which India would have felt are better character tics against this Pakistani line-up than Chahal.
