Pacer returns to Indian team after 14 months, picked for T20Is against England Vidarbha’s Jitesh Sharma has been dropped in favour of Dhruv Jurel
MUMBAI
NEARLY 14 months after he last played an international game, veteran seamer Mohammed Shami on Saturday returned to the Indian team for the upcoming five-match T20I series against visiting England.
The 34-year-old Shami’s last outing for India was the 2023 ODI World Cup final against Australia at Ahmedabad on November 19, after which he was out of the team for a long time due to an ankle injury for which he underwent surgery in the UK last year.
Shami’s rehabilitation process was a long and arduous one and a swelling on his knee then prevented him from joining the Indian team for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, leaving Jasprit Bumrah to shoulder the bulk of the pace bowling load.
Suryakumar Yadav will lead the 15-member team in the series starting in Kolkata on January 22.
It is understood that Shami has been picked because he will also be a part of the Champions Trophy squad and will be gradually working on his bowling load.
He is not going to play all five games against England.
From the team that played against South Africa in an away series in November, Ramandeep Singh was replaced by the find of the BGT Trophy, Nitish Kumar Reddy, while Avesh Khan and Yash Dayal made way for Shami and Harshit Rana, respectively.
Wicketkeeper Jitesh Sharma was dropped with Dhruv Jurel making the cut.
The four spinners in the squad are Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Varun Chakravarthy and Washington Sundar.
Incidentally, Shubman Gill, who was made vice-captain after the last T20 World Cup, hasn’t found a place in the team.
Sanju Samson and Yashasvi Jaiswal will open the innings followed by Tilak Varma and skipper Surya.
Hardik Pandya and Rinku Singh are expected to bat at No 5 five and No 6, respectively, and they will be followed by Axar in the batting order.
The two pacers for the first couple of games will be Arshdeep Singh and Shami, with Pandya as the third seamer. The two wrist spinners -- Chakravarthy and Bishnoi -- will come into the equation to complete the expected playing XI.
After the T20I series, India and England will then face off in a three-match ODI series from February 6.
Gambhir, BCCI officials to review Aus tour
The future of leading batters Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will be discussed threadbare in a meeting that head coach Gautam Gambhir and chief selector Ajit Agarkar are scheduled to hold with BCCI officials to review the recent tour to Australia.
The back-to-back series defeats against New Zealand (home) and Australia (away) and the diminishing returns with the bat have put Kohli and Rohit under scanner.
The PTI has learned that the powers that be will discuss in detail the future plan — whether to activate the transition switch from next month’s Champions
Trophy or wait for the cycle to end with the ICC marquee event.
Though it’s likely that the senior batters will get another chance to redeem themselves at the ODI Champions Trophy, a format in which they have always excelled.
They may also take into consideration the fact that both Kohli and Rohit have played just three ODIs in 2024 after the 2023 World Cup at home, and that could be too light a sample size to make a final call on their 50-over career.
Both Kohli and Rohit endured different fortunes too in the series against Sri Lanka.
While Kohli amassed 24, 14 and 20 in Colombo, Rohit walked away with scores of 58, 64 and 35 against the Lankans.
But overall, Kohli has been a champion performer in 50-overs, his staple format and a good outing in the Champions Trophy could bring him, and Rohit too, back into a good frame of mind.
However, their Test future is different. The next assignment is an away five-match series against England, and the mandarins will certainly assess the drying runs from the blades of Kohli and Rohit in the traditional format.
In the most recent outing against Australia, Kohli, despite a hundred at Perth, could garner only 190 runs at an average of 23.75 while
Rohit, who skipped the first Test and opted out of the fifth match, made 31 runs at 6.2.
Those performances will certainly be mooted thoroughly while seeking Gambhir’s views on their desire to continue playing the longest version of the sport.
Similarly, it is possible that the performance of the Gambhir-led coaching staff too could be assayed and asked about their vision to handle the transition period without any more
hiccups.