India Announce 15-Member Squad For T20 World Cup; Ashwin Returns But Dhawan, Chahal Excluded

New Delhi: The All-India Senior Selection Committee of BCCI on Wednesday announced the — member team for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2021 in October. Led by Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket team includes some fresh faces who will participate in the quadrennial event which will get underway on October 23 in Abu Dhabi. BCCI’s selection committee led by Chetan Sharma met at the headquarters in Mumbai and connected with skipper Kohli in Manchester and coach Ravi Shastri in London over finalizing names for the T20 extravaganza.

BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah (convenor of the selection committee) were also part of the most important selection by the committee.

KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma are the two first-choice openers when it comes to the shortest format, and another option is to have Virat opening alongside Rohit, if the management wants to play Suryakumar Yadav at number three. However, senior opener Shikhar Dhawan missed out his place. While, Shreyas Iyer has been included as a standby player.

Standby players – Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar.#TeamIndia

— BCCI (@BCCI) September 8, 2021

In the spin-department, the selectors made some tough calls by excluding Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav while veteran Ravichandran Ashwin returned to the squad.

Along with the original squad, the selectors will also pick travelling reserves who will go to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) alongside the 15-member squad as per COVID-19 protocols.

While most of the teams are announcing 15-member squads, ICC has given a green signal to a squad strength of 30, instead of 23 in earlier editions, amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The number is inclusive of the support staff.

Any team can have more than 30-member squads but the extra cost is supposed to be borne by the country’s cricket board.

The pace attack will be led by Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Test specialist Mohammed Shami prove a perfect fiddle to these two. Meanwhile, swing bowlers Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur have been included as the stand by players.

India will open its T20 World Cup campaign against Pakistan on October 24 in Dubai.

India Squad: Virat Kohli (Capt), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Rahul Chahar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohd Shami.

Standby players – Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar.