Indian captain Rohit Sharma has revealed that they will decide Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement for the T20 World Cup after reaching Australia. Bumrah has been ruled out with a back injury and it is a massive blow to the team.
India will travel to Australia with 14 players in the main squad whereas the standby players will travel later. Mohammad Shami, and Deepak Chahar are the two front runners to replace Bumrah in the main squad as both of them are also part of the standby players list.
However, Shami didn’t play in the T20I series against Australia and South Africa after he tested positive for Covid-19. Shami had last played a T20I in the 2021 T20 World Cup and thus he doesn’t have enough game time under his belt.
On the other hand, Deepak Chahar has been expensive in the recent past and he conceded 48 runs in the four overs against South Africa in the third T20I.
“As a team we said at the beginning, no matter what happens with the result – there’s always room for improvement. We want to keep getting better as a team. Teams have been quite challenging, they can challenge in all departments. Something we have been talking about at length. We need to look at lot of things. Surya’s form is a concern (laughs). We need to work on our bowling. We played against two quality sides, we came across tough challenges,” Rohit Sharma said in the post-match presentation ceremony.
“We need to see what better we can do. We are working towards that, guys need a lot of clarity, it’s my job to make sure it happens. It’s a work in progress, we need to keep working and keep finding answers to it. Lot of the guys haven’t been to Australia, that’s why we are going there early. We want to play on the bouncy pitches of Perth, we want to see what we can do there.
“Only 7,8 members of the squad have been to Australia, so we have organized a few practice games. We need to understand what combination we can play. Bumrah is out of the World Cup, so we need to find a bowler who has experience of bowling in Australia. Not sure who that bowler is going to be, we will see once we travel to Australia, we’ll find it out there,” Rohit added.
It is expected that Mohammed Shami might be backed in the T20 World Cup as he has got all the experience of bowling on the Australian pitches. Shami had scalped 20 wickets in 16 matches for Gujarat Titans and had done a fine job, especially in the PowerPlay overs.
India will begin their T20 World Cup campaign against Pakistan on October 23.
