India all-rounder Shivam Dube remains a key player in India’s T20 set-up, and bowling coach Morne Morkel wants him to step up as a back-up medium pacer ahead of the T20 World Cup, considering head coach Gautam Gambhir’s philosophy of packing the XI with multi-skilled players as well.

“For me, it’s always important to see a guy like Shivam that can bowl four overs,” Morkel told the media persons in the team’s net session at the ICC Academy. “I’m always pushing for all-rounders to work hard on both skills. Sometimes guys can get a little bit naughty in practice and focus just on one. Here in this environment, we want to leave no stone unturned.”

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“On the day, we’re going to need somebody to do the work for us. Conditions might favour him more than somebody else. For us, it’s about being professional. It’s about taking responsibility of putting quality work in there on the day when you’re called upon by Surya to do the job. You’ve to be ready to do that,” he added.

However, during the Champions Trophy, India played four specialist spinners – Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja. And Morkel reminded that wickets at the Dubai Stadium in September are much greener and less tired as well.

“Again, we need to go and look at the wicket. I think when the Champions Trophy was played at that time, there was a lot of cricket on the surfaces here and they looked a little bit tired,” Morkel said. “So again, tonight we’ll have a first look at the surface and I believe there’s quite a bit of a grass covering on the square. So we’ll have a good idea going into the first game in terms of what is sort of a better way to go, but in terms of planning at the moment, we’re covering all bases and then we’ll make a decision obviously on match day.”

“I think he’s a very professional athlete. His attitude since England, where he received hardly any game time, he’s still the guy that put the overs in. And for me, Kuldeep, like I said, he’s bowled a lot of overs in his career. He knows what to do to get himself ready for T20 cricket, white-ball cricket. And like I said, we can control only what we can control now, and that is when we do train now and when we have our sessions, that it’s focused, that there’s a purpose behind it and we have goals. We set those goals out and from there, it’s up to them to go out and lead with the ball,” Morne Morkel concluded.