Chahal, Fazal in for Zimbabwe tour; Dhoni to lead
NEW DELHI: MS Dhoni will lead India’s revamped ODI and Twenty20 international squad in next month’s tour of Zimbabwe, one that features five uncapped players and missing a host of regular players.
The amount of cricket already played this year – 16 T20Is and five ODIs, plus the ongoing IPL – and the volume of matches lined up this season – 17 Tests, most critically – has prompted the BCCI selectors to give a break to Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, Hardik Pandya and Umesh Yadav for the Zimbabwe tour that comprises three ODIs and three T20Is. Among those to be called up to in their places are the Haryana legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal and off spinning allrounder Jayant Yadav, Vidarbha batsman Faiz Fazal, Punjab batsman Mandeep Singh and Karnataka’s Karun Nair.
Others to earn selection are KL Rahul, Ambati Rayudu, Rishi Dhawan, Axar Patel, Kedar Jadhav and Jaydev Unadkat. Pawan Negi, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh have been dropped from the T20I squad, while Gurkeerat Singh is missing from India’s previous ODI squad.
The BCCI selection committee, headed by Sandeep Patil, announced the squad in Mumbai on Monday and rewarded success in the IPL. Chahal, 25, leads the bowling table with 19 wickets at 23.27 and an economy of 7.75, having played 11 of Royal Challengers Bangalore’s 14 matches. He was RCB’s highest wicket-taker in 2015 as well, and third overall, with 23 from 15 games. Though his first-class (37 wickets in 20 games) and List A (25 wickets in 25 games) are modest, in the T20 format that Chahal has had success, with 80 wickets from 77 games. This is his first call-up to a representative Indian squad.
Rahul, 24, is RCB’s third-highest run-getter this year with 386 at 55.14 from 12 matches, scoring four fifties. Key to his first selection in India’s limited-overs squad is keeping wickets for RCB; he has nine dismissals behind the stumps in IPL 2016. Rahul’s Karnataka team-mate Nair, 24, was second on Delhi Daredevils’ charts with 347 runs at an average of 35/70 and strike-rate of 120.20, with three half-centuries. He has previously been a part of the Test squad that went to Sri Lanka last year.
