Former India player turned commentator Aakash Chopra believes that India might not be banking on Shikhar Dhawan for the upcoming T20 World Cup. His comments came as the left-hander is currently not in his best form. While he used to India’s one of the batting mainstays along with Rohit Sharma for the last 7-8 years, might not get the place with KL Rahul and the captain Virat Kohli’s recent interest to open the innings as well.
Notably, he has played in only one of India’s last five T20I games against England where India used quite a few different opening pairs as well.
“I feel the team might not be looking at him [Shikhar Dhawan]. It is just my thought because last when you played him in the T20Is, he played just one match and was dropped for four. That wasn’t fair, to begin with,” Aakash Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
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The veteran, however, added that Shikhar Dhawan would not be completely out of the squad as he will soon lead the Indian team in the limited-overs series against Sri Lanka which doesn’t have the key players like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.
“However, his IPL has been so good that you again want to go towards him but can’t keep doing this, that you do one thing first and then the other thing. But they have made him the captain now, so if he does well, his name will be there in the list,” Chopra again shared.
The former player again said that there are only two places available in the Indian batting unit for the T20 World Cup and as many as four players are on the verge of grabbing that – Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, and Shreyas Iyer.
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“I feel Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer – two out of these four might get picked. Ishan Kishan, Manish Pandey and Sanju Samson might actually fall behind in this race. Manish Pandey’s stocks are a little low for sure because when he plays at the top, he doesn’t play that fast and he doesn’t do well even for his franchise down the order. So, I feel he has the lowest stocks amongst all these unless he has a great tour of Sri Lanka,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
Team India are scheduled to play three ODIs and as many T20Is in Sri Lanka which will start from July 13.
