Indian captain Rohit Sharma revealed he wanted four spinners because of the slow conditions in the West Indies. India picked Axar Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav in their 15-man squad for the T20I showpiece on Tuesday.
The pitches are expected to be slow in the West Indies and the USA and the spinners certainly come into action. Furthermore, the Indian selectors, led by Ajit Agarkar, picked three pacers in Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Arshdeep Singh.
Rohit remained tight-lipped on his selection of four spinners in the squad.
“I don’t want to go into details on this. I wanted four spinners. We have played a lot of cricket there. The match starts at 10 am. There is a technical aspect involved in this,” Rohit said in a press conference to address queries on the squad selection in Mumbai.
“The reason for picking four spinners is something I won’t reveal now. I wanted our spinners. With two of them being all-rounders and two attacking options, it gives you balance. Based on opposition, we can decide who to play,” added the skipper.
Rohit went on to add that he wanted more strength in the middle order and thus Shivam Dube was preferred ahead of Rinku Singh. Dube has scored 350 runs in 10 matches of IPL 2024 whereas many believe that Rinku was unlucky to miss out.
“We’ve got to understand what the pitches will be like and the opposition composition. One thing we looked at is our middle overs hitting. Our top-order hitting has been alright, it has not been bad.
“There are other options there as well. We picked a guy based on his performance in the IPL and a few games he played for India. There is no guarantee what our playing eleven will look like,” he said referring to Dube.
The captain added that he had figured out 70 to 80 per cent of the squad before the IPL.
“You sort of make the playing eleven in your mind and work around it. A lot of preparations and talks and guys playing games happen during the IPL, A lot of them have been playing the format for a while now.
“The talk of what are final 15 is going to be started much before IPL. It is just a few spots we had to look at in the IPL.
“In IPL performances change every day. Anyone will come and score a hundred or take five wickets. We knew 70-80 per cent of our squad (before the IPL),” he said.
India will begin their T20 World Cup campaign against Ireland on June 5th.
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