With the 13th season of the Indian Premier League less than a week to go, veteran players and analysts have begun to compile their best XI from the present lot. And former Australian cricketer and ex-player of the Kolkata Knight Riders, Brad Hogg, on Monday formed his own "Best XI", however, much to the dismay of Chennai Super Kings fans, there was no MS Dhoni in his list, neither was there AB de Villiers, IPL's most prolific middle-order batsman.
"I haven't got MS Dhoni or AB de Villiers or Chris Gayle in there. They are a little bit long in the tooth. A little bit old. But they can turn things around and be in my final XI at the end of the tournament," Hogg said.
Hogg instead went ahead to Rishabh Pant as his wicketkeeping option and picked Kane Williamson from Sunrisers Hyderabad as the captain of his team. His captaincy choice comes despite David Warner being reinstated as SRH skipper primarily because there is no guarantee of a spot for Williamson, who was the highest run-getter the IPL season Warner had missed, in the SRH playing XI.
“Williamson has a good head on his shoulders and he is a great ambassador for the game,” is what Hogg opined.
Overall, Hogg's team has Warner and Rohit Sharma as openers followed by Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson. Pant and Andre Russell has been picked as openers. In the bowling department, he picked Sunil Narine and Ravindra Jadeja as his spinners and Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah as his pacers.
