Former Indian wicket-keeper bat Dinesh Karthik has revealed the reason why Shubman Gill will open for India in the Champions Trophy. Karthik said Gill would take the opening slot with captain Rohit Sharma as he is the vice-captain of the team.
Yashasvi Jaiswal is the third opener in the team and he has been in tremendous form. The left-hander was India’s highest run-getter in the recently Border-Gavaskar trophy as he scored 391 runs in five Test matches at an average of 43.44.
The southpaw has played 23 T20Is for India in which he has scored 723 runs at an average of 36.15 but he is yet to make his ODI debut.
On the other hand, Shubman Gill has scored 2328 runs in 47 ODIs at an impressive average of 58.2 and thus he has also performed consistently in the 50-over version.
“Purely because Shubman Gill has been announced as vice-captain, it’s their way of saying he is going to start and he’s going to play all games. So, he will be opening in this Champions Trophy,” Karthik said on Cribuzz’s HeyCBwithDK show.
Karthik reckons the Ajit Agarkar-led selection panel could have picked a fast bowler in place of a spin-bowling all-rounder in the Champions Trophy squad.
“I only feel one thing. Could there have been a fast bowler instead of two left-arm spinning all-rounders? I think they found it hard to choose which one to take amongst the two. That was the only thing. Could it have been Harshit (Rana) or Siraj as the next fast bowler? That’s the only thing. Other than that, I think they’ve picked a fair squad. I hoped Varun Chakravarthy would be there, but they’ve gone for Kuldeep Yadav, fair enough.”
The Rohit Sharma-led will open their Champions Trophy campaign against Bangladesh on February 20 at the Dubai International Stadium.
India squad for the Champions Trophy: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill (vc), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Rishabh Pant(wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah*, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal
