Former India captain and former BCCI President Sourav Ganguly made a bold call by picking Suryakumar Yadav and omitting Sanju Samson in his preferred 15-man India squad for the World Cup 2023.
The World Cup 2023 will kick-start from October 5, and before that India will participate in the Asia Cup 2023 in Sri Lanka.
The BCCI selectors and the team management have already excluded Sanju Samson from the 17-man squad for the Asia Cup, picking Ishan Kishan as the backup wicket-keeper to KL Rahul and going with the Mumbai Indians duo of Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma in the squad ahead of Sanju Samson, who is the 18th man, a traveling backup.
Sanju Samson is also unlikely to make it into India’s squad for the World Cup 2023, something which Sourav Ganguly also said in his opinion while picking up the squad for the tournament.
Of the 17-man India squad selected by the selectors for Asia Cup, the 15 players to be picked for the World Cup are likely to be from that. From that squad, Sourav Ganguly left out Tilak Varma and Prasidh Krishna while retaining Suryakumar Yadav in his preferred World Cup squad while speaking on Star Sports. The former India opener also picked Shardul Thakur in the squad over Prasidh Krishna.
Sourav Ganguly picks his India 15-man squad for World Cup 2023:
Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami
Samson has much better ODI numbers than Suryakumar Yadav – Samson averages 55 in 12 ODI innings while SKY averages only 24 after 24 ODI knocks – and Tilak Varma hasn’t even made his ODI debut yet. Still, the MI pair was picked in the Asia Cup squad while Samson was omitted.
Another big-name player who was excluded from India’s Asia Cup squad was senior leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal. Sourav Ganguly pointed out that India have picked three spinners in the squad – Jadeja, Axar, and Kuldeep – and Axar also provides batting depth.
“Its ok. You have to play only with three spinners. I think they had done the right thing by picking up Axar Patel as he can bat,” Ganguly said
