On Tuesday evening, the BCCI announced the squads for the upcoming home T20I and ODI series against Sri Lanka.
India will kick off their home season facing the Island neighbours, Sri Lanka, who are the Asia Cup champions, with 3 T20Is starting January 3 followed by 3 ODIs.
The senior trio of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and KL Rahul have been rested from the T20I series and will return for the ODIs. This gives an opportunity to the management to test their bench strength and groom more top-order batters as the team under Hardik Pandya begins their preparations for the 2024 T20 World Cup.
India’s squad for Sri Lanka T20Is: Hardik Pandya (Captain), Ishan Kishan (wk), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shubman Gill, Suryakumar Yadav (VC), Deepak Hooda, Rahul Tripathi, Sanju Samson, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Harshal Patel, Umran Malik, Shivam Mavi, Mukesh Kumar.
It was once again a surprise to not see explosive opener Prithvi Shaw’s name in the T20I squad.
The selectors went with Ishan Kishan, Ruturaj Gaikwad, and even the uncapped Shubman Gill, while once again, harshly ignoring the Delhi Capitals opener who is, without any doubt, more attacking batsman than the three aforementioned openers.
Kishan’s case has been strengthened after he hit a double century in an ODI against Bangladesh, but Gaikwad and Gill’s selection over Shaw in T20I is baffling the fans.
After facing yet another selection snub by the national selectors, the 23-year-old Mumbai opener shared a stories on Instagram which many are saying it a dig at the selectors.
In the first video, there was a line that said, “Kisi ne muft me paa liya who shaqs, jisko mujhe har keemat par chahiye tha (The person that I wanted to be with, is now with someone else for free).”
Check out here:
In his second Instagram story, Prithvi Shaw shared a video of motivational speaker and sage Gaur Gopal Das, who said the following words, “If someone is smiling it doesn’t mean they are happy in their life. Happiness is never automatic, Problems are automatic. One chooses Positivity, love, and Happiness. Anger, hate, and Negativity.”
Here is Shaw’s post:
In 92 T20 matches in his career, Shaw has a strike rate of 151 and averages 26. In his last two IPL seasons, he had a strike rate of 159 and 152 at an average around 30.
