The absence of Mohammed Shami from India’s squad for the upcoming Asia Cup tournament was met with mixed reactions.
While many felt that Shami should have been the in squad given his brilliant form during the IPL 2022 and more so in the absence of the injured Jasprit Bumrah and Harshal Patel, the other section pointed out that the Shami hadn’t played a single T20I since last year’s T20 World Cup – owing to rest and breaks to be fresh for the other two formats – and that he wasn’t in India’s scheme in the shortest format.
Is Mohammed Shami’s T20I career finished?
Shami’s omission from the Asia Cup 2022 squad largely means that he won’t be part of the T20 World Cup 2022 squad, the tournament will be played in October-November in Australia, where his skillset and abilities could have very useful.
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting feels that Shami’s exclusion is justified as he sees that there are other fast bowlers who are better than Shami in T20 cricket whose expertise are more effective in Test cricket. Along with Bhuvneshwar, India have named Arshdeep and Avesh for Asia Cup in the absence of the injured duo of Harshal and Bumrah, and Deepak Chahar is a reserve pacer.
“He’s been a very, very good bowler for India for a long time now. If you look at his strengths, his Test cricket is probably where he thrives the most,” Ponting said while speaking on The ICC Review.
“I think there are better fast bowlers in Indian T20 cricket than Shami and they’ve only named three (for the Asia Cup).”
Although Ponting did add that Shami may sneak in if India chooses to go with a fourth seamer at the T20 World Cup.
“So if there’s potentially four named in the squad he might be the fourth man in. I would think they’ll probably only have the four quicks coming to Australia. They’ll still want to bring a lot of spin here even though the wickets are probably not that conducive,” Ponting further opined.
How many wickets did Mohammed Shami pick in IPL 2022?
Shami had a fantastic IPL 2022 season where he helped Gujarat Titan to the title: Shami was the 7th highest wicket-taker with 20 wickets; among Indian pacers only Umran Malik had more wickets -22 – than Shami.
India’s squad for Asia Cup 2022:
Rohit Sharma (Captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan
Shreyas Iyer, Axar Patel and Deepak Chahar have been named as standbys.
