ACC Asia Cup

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Asia Cup T20 2022 Squad :

Rohit Sharma(captain), KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Risabh Pant, Deepak Hooda , Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Y Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan

Back-up: Shreyas iyer, Deepak Chahar, Axar Patel

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Squad is fully based on UAE condition. Hope dew doesn't makes it again win the toss field first.

Most likely : R Sharma, KL Rahul, V Kohli, SKY, D Karthik, H Pandya, R Jadeja, R Ashwin, Y Chahal, Arshdeep, B Kumar

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Message is now clear, Shami will play only test & odis.If he is fit, he should have been there in Zim odi squad

[indiansportsfan]

Agree with most of the selections, however Chahar should have been selected instead of Avesh. Avesh is highly unreliable, and can be a liability in crunch matches. In contrast, Chahar has shown to be fairly consistent, and his batting can be highly useful as well.
Also I would prefer Kuldeep over Bishnoi, based on their IPL performances. I think Bishnoi was found out somewhat in this year's IPL and I am afraid that top flight international cricket will have the same outcome.
Hoping that both Chahar and Kuldeep can make their case in the Zimbabwe series.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Avesh Khan's T20 career so far has been like Mohammed Siraj, but Siraj has improved and is now differant bowler in Odis & Test. Good to see selectors & team management showing faith in him. Getting picked in Indo Pak encounter could be make or break for him.

Lots of thinking has been made to make the bowling spin heavy as per UAE tracks.Bhisnoi is good selection, wrist spinners are now asset in T20 Cricket.Deepak Chahar & Kuldeep is injury proned, missed most of the games recently, so it was hard for the selectors to include them in Asia Cup. However, they could make come back through performance against Zimbabwe, South Africa & Australia series.

[prasen9]

Clearly, it is a travesty of justice that Avesh Khan who has been rubbish is being preferred to DLC, who has performed. Not only that, he can bat. We cannot carry three pacers who cannot bat. And, Bhuvi's batting has gone down at least wrt his hitting ability.

Chahal despite his crappy bowling similarly like Avesh gets selected because he is a domestic dada and IPL rules.

Ditto for Pant.

In essence, the selectors are saying performance be damned, we will choose who we think can perform even if they have not performed in reality. This is what causes teams to lose. And, this team will lose if we send the likes of Avesh, Chahal and Pant. Iyer must be thinking what else he can do.

Anyway, let us see. Reality has a strange way of biting you in the back when human beings think that they know better. Delusional selections at its best. At least on the batting side, we did not have too many shockers except the return of the form-less Kohli.

[Mukherjee Babu]

What happened to T Natarajan ? He is not playing TNPL, vanished after 11 IPL games for SRH, he was going great in UAE leg of IPL 2020, could have been great addition in Asia Cup

[prasen9]

Don't know. Saini and Natarajan performed well in T20Is but got canned because we mix formats. See Pant. Now domestic dadas like Avesh are being continued. Hope he improves. Or we do not need him, with perhaps the chosen trio of Bhuvi, Bumrah, Arshdeep doing well backed up by Hardik. Otherwise, we will lose yet another WC because we have no depth in pace bowling.

[indiansportsfan]

Natarajan has been very injury prone, which is actually quite amazing for someone who plays only 1 format, that too the shortest one.

Regarding Saini, agree that he was decent in his international outings more than 2 years back (none against the strongest teams though), but since then he has had 2 absolutely horrible IPL seasons, playing just 2 games in each, with an economy rate of 13 and 12 respectively. For a player with this kind of IPL record, I would be very hesitant to play him in the international side. If we agree that international level is no less than IPL, if a player is so horrible at IPL, what chance does he have at a higher level?

So I absolutely do not fault selectors for not picking either of these players. The right choice though would have been Chahar instead of Avesh.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Bowling yorkers at regular intervals takes lots of pressure in his knees. Its seems is lower leg isn't strong enough to take that toll, as a result he is getting injury proned

[prasen9]

I agree with ISF. I would certainly not foist Nata and Saini given what has happened and their lack of matches. They need to be match fit too. Nata did play a full IPL this time and did okay. No? He may be injury prone but if he is significantly better than the alternatives, what is wrong with using him when he is fit. Nata was very expensive 9.44 but that may happen to someone in one season if they bowl a lot of overs at the end, which he does. Instead we took his teammate, who just bowls fast but was crap. His IPL team did not trust him to close the bowling regularly and instead went with Nata. So, I think we should have tried Nata. Avesh is 8.73, better but not that much and it is over only 11-13 games.

Wrt Saini, you have a point and yes, I would not pick him right now either right away without giving him 6-8 matches. But, I'd work with him at the academy and try to fix him. The 12 and 13 runs/over was over 6 overs in the season and 4 overs in the season. Why was he not played more? Injured? Coach lost faith? Anyway, he would not be match fit. So, it would be high risk.

I think in the academy we should have some 30 players and have them play serious matches against each other and keep track of the performances.

Chahar before Avesh as of now until Avesh can improve.

[prasen9]

Navdeep had a good match if you look at the context. Article He supposedly bowled a brilliant final over and got a caught and bowled early on. He got one more match, i.e., 4-6 overs in two matches, and then benched. I don't know if he got injured. I guess we can say that if the coach did not have confidence in him for a domestic game how can he be selected. That is true. But, maybe the coach made a mistake and maybe we should try to get him back. He has some qualities and can bowl fast and bat a bit. And it is not like we have fast bowlers galore in T20Is. We are actually better off in test cricket with a set group of bowlers with good backups.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

MP fast bowler Kuldeep Sen added to the squad as cover of Deepak Chahar

[Atithee]

I think Kohli should seriously consider shaving his beard. I know it makes no cricketing logic, but sometimes seeing a new (or old) you, just refreshes your mindset. I don’t know what is it with beards in India now. It’s an epidemic and I just can’t fathom why. I think cricketers started it and now everyone thinks he’s Kohli. Or Ranveer Singh.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Benching in form Deepak Hooda in Pak game will not be a good decision, no matter wheather such player is of high reputation or holding any kind of post in the team.Current form is more important then reputation. R Sharma, D Hooda,V Kohli, SKY, H Pandya, R Jadeja, DK, R Ashwin, Y Chahal, B Kumar, Arshdeep