Former Indian captain Kris Srikkanth opined on left-arm pace bowler Arshdeep Singh constantly missing out from the playing XI after his most recent exclusion in the opening T20I against Australia in Canberra. Srikkanth believes that despite his good shows, Arshdeep hasn’t reached Shubman Gill’s level to be selected in the side, irrespective of
circumstances as well.

Talking about Arshdeep’s regular exclusion even from the Indian T20I XI, Srikkanth said on his YouTube channel: “Unfortunately for Arshdeep Singh, he hasn’t reached Shubman Gill’s level yet in the team combination. That’s where a person like Shubman Gill scores over an Arshdeep Singh. Shubman Gill was dropped even in the Test series in Australia. But then he was made the captain and he did brilliantly in England. Even T20Is, he didn’t score for a long time. Yet, he played superbly today. So the thought process with a guy like Shubman Gill probably was to give him as many chances and hope one day he’ll be a big leader and win matches.”

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Kris Srikkanth also stated that bowlers are usually given less leeway compared to the batters when it comes to selection as well.

“It mainly happens to bowlers. There is always an extra leeway given to batters because it’s a batsmen-dominated game, especially the white-ball formats. So preferences always go to batters, nothing can be done about it,” said Srikkanth. Take Kuldeep himself, he bowled brilliantly in the Champions Trophy , but did not play in England. Likewise, even ODIs, he didn’t play the first two games. Same way, Varun Chakravarthy and Ravindra Jadeja won India the Champions Trophy but were left out of the ODI squad itself.”