Indian captain Virat Kohli has admitted that dropping Yuzvendra Chahal was a challenging call for him for the T20 World Cup.
Chahal wasn’t in the best of forms and thus he was ignored in the World Cup and instead the national selectors added Rahul Chahar, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Varun Chakravarthy to the squad.
However, Chahal proved his mettle in the recently concluded IPL 2021 for Royal Challengers Bangalore as he scalped 18 wickets in 15 matches at an impressive average of 20.77 and an economy rate of 7.05. Thus, he played an instrumental role in taking RCB to the playoff stages.
Kohli revealed that they backed Rahul Chahar in place of experienced Chahal as the former bowls faster through the air and had done well against Sri Lanka and England. However, Chahar didn’t have the best run in IPL 2021 as he snared 13 wickets in 11 matches for Mumbai Indians.
“It was a difficult and challenging call (dropping Chahal), Virat Kohli said. “We decided to back Rahul Chahar for a reason, he is a guy who bowls with pace. Bowled well in Sri Lanka and in England also he was good. The wickets in UAE will be slow and the guys who bowl with some pace, attack with stumps and that is the factor that tipped the balance in favor of Rahul,” he added.
On the other hand, Ravichandran Ashwin was included in the T20 World Cup squad. Kohli added that Ashwin has been awarded a place in the squad for reviving his limited-overs career. Ashwin has all the experience under his belt and he is certainly a smart bowler and also has a lot of arrows in his quiver.
“The one thing Ashwin has really improved and he is bowling with a lot of courage. He is not shy to put the ball in the right areas against batsmen like Polly (Pollard), lengths at which the bowlers can be hit. Ashwin has been rewarded for reviving his white-ball bowling. “Ash and Jadeja have been performing really well which augurs really well for us as a team to see these finger spinners back.”
India will begin their World Cup campaign against arch-rivals Pakistan at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on 24th October.
