Former Indian wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik believes Rishabh Pant was selected ahead of Sanju Samson as the former brings a left-handed angle for the team. Furthermore, Karthik noted that Samson didn’t play the Vijay Hazare Trophy for Kerala and it worked against him. Samson wasn’t selected in Kerala’s squad as he missed a training camp.

Meanwhile, Pant is going to be the second choice wicket-keeper after KL Rahul in the Champions Trophy. Rishabh Pant, who has not been picked for England T20Is, recently scored 255 runs in five Test matches against Australia at an average of 28.33. 

Pant has scored 1209 runs in 76 T20Is at an average of 23.25 whereas the pugnacious batter has scored 871 runs in 31 ODI matches at an average of 33.5 and thus he hasn’t yet taken the white-ball formats by storm.

“It almost had to happen, isn’t it? It was either Rishabh Pant or Sanju Samson. I know you can look at both of them as pure batters, but I think they have tilted towards Rishabh Pant for just the one reason: because he is a left-hander,” Karthik said on Cricbuzz’s HeyCBwithDK show.

“He can give that differential variable that they are looking for in the batting order. But Sanju Samson was so close, and the fact that he didn’t play in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, I am sure, has played a part in that too,” he added.

India will begin their Champions Trophy campaign against Bangladesh in Dubai on February 20.

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