As the Indian team gears up for the T20I World Cup to be played in Australia later this year, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the team management are busy playing musical chairs with different players, at different positions and conditions. Team India had an extremely dismal outing in the UAE edition of the T20I World Cup played in 2021 as they crashed out of the multi-nation tournament in the league stage. The men in blue this time around will look to put their plans in place and lock in a core group to play around with before they board the flight to Australia.
As BCCI announced the final T20I squad for the Caribbean tour, what raised many eyebrows was Sanju Samson's omission from the T20I squad. The Rajasthan Royals skipper who has been hailed as one of the most talented batsmen ever produced by the country has surprisingly played only 14 T20Is for team India. The 27-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman who made his debut in 2015 for India has not been given enough chances even after Indian talisman MS Dhoni retired after the 2019 world cup. Many feel that the Kerala batsman deserves better treatment from the national outfit and he will start to fire if given proper chances.
However, Sanju Samson has been performing reasonably well for the Rajasthan Royals and is one of their key players in the Indian Premier League. With Pant being the first choice wicketkeeper-batsman across all formats, people feel that Samson deserves to play for the team purely as a batsman. Sanju Samson showed his batting prowess in the second T20I against Ireland as he scored a splendid 77 off 42 deliveries which was instrumental in India winning and clinching the series.
With time, Samson's case is becoming challenging to understand as he was also not included in the playing XI that took the field against England in the 3-match T20I series. Many experts have also questioned the inclusion of Shreyas Iyer in the team ahead of Sanju Samson. It will now be very interesting to see if he can find his place in the limited-overs squad in the upcoming Asia cup.
Team India squad for West Indies T20Is: Rohit Sharma (C), I Kishan, KL Rahul*, Suryakumar Yadav, D Hooda, S Iyer, D Karthik, R Pant, H Pandya, R Jadeja, Axar Patel, R Ashwin, R Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav*, B Kumar, Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh.
