As South Africa's tour to India concludes, it is time for another round of auditions to start for determining a probable squad that will take the flight to Australia for the T20I World Cup which is scheduled to be played in October this year. Team India would have liked to try and test a few youngsters who were at their disposal in the Proteas series but things went pretty downhill for them at the start of the series. With 2-0 down in the five-match T20I series against the Proteas, the men in blue had no option of making any kinds of changes and persisted with the same set of players for the entire series.
To India's fortune, they leveled the series against the Proteas and now their caravan moves to Ireland with Hardik Pandya leading the charge for the young Indian Team. The Gujarat Titans captain is fresh out of his IPL 2022 exploits and is probably being considered as one of India's next white ball captaincy contenders. Apart from Hardik, two other IPL stars have been in the news for quite some time but have not been able to make their cut for the Indian team. Umran Malik and Arshdeep Singh, the pacers from SunRisers Hyderabad and Punjab Kings without any grain of doubt have been extremely valuable bowlers and have delivered time and again to win crucial games for their franchises.
How are they different?
Their consistency has earned them a place in the national squad and both have been battling out ferociously to make their debut and cement their place in the national team by the time the T20I World Cup approaches. Both of them are extremely different as bowlers. Umran is right-handed whereas Arshdeep bowls with his left hand. Umran excels in ferocious pace and when in good rhythm can clock 160kmph. Whereas Arshdeep has shown his ability to bowl in the death and executes those lethal yorkers which restrains the batsmen and doesn't let them take off when the run rate increases. Different people have been rooting for both of them and the Indian management has a good headache to go ahead with.
India Squad for Ireland Tour
Hardik Pandya (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (vc), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Rahul Tripathi, Deepak Hooda, Venkatesh Iyer, Axar Patel, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Umran Malik, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi
