After clearing all the clouds of uncertainties about India’s participation in ICC Champions Trophy 2017, BCCI selectors has finally announced their 15-member squad for the for the mega event.
India is the defending champions of the coveted trophy and their squad was much awaited by the cricketing fraternity. All the 7 other nations have had announced their squads on or before the deadline of 25th April. given by the ICC. But, due to the tiff between ICC and BCCI over the revenue sharing model, the Indian board warned to pull Team India out of the tournament, if ICC didn’t give in.
However, after the intervention of the Supreme court appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) and sponsors and broadcasters, both ICC and BCCI settled their nerves down. On May 7th after an urgent SGM, the Indian board decided to take part in the mega event. Indian selection committee announced the squad on May 8th.
Many Pundits of cricket reckoned that most of the IPL performers will go under the scanner of the BCCI selectors for some crucial place for the CT 2017 squad. Players like Robin Uthappa, Kuldeep Yadav, Suresh Raina, Rishabh Pant and Gautam Gambhir are possibly some of the examples of the cricketers that were expected to feature in the 15-memeber squad for the mega event.
Gambhir and Uthappa both played for KKR in the IPL and they have been scoring runs on a consistent basis for their team. On the other hand, a youngster like Rishabh Pant has played some explosive innings for his team. Recently, Raina became the first batsman to score 4500 runs in IPL, while Kuldeep Yadav was eyeing to fill in the place of the 3rd spinner in the team.
Nevertheless, BCCI has disappointment many of them, as they have chosen the tried and tested ODI squad for CT 2017. The openers slots are filled by Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma, while Kedar Jadhav and Hardik Pandya will be featuring as the all-rounders in the team. Surprisingly, Manish Pandey has got some luck and sealed his place in the despite the failures in the England ODI series.
The exclusions of the players like Gambhir, Raina and especially Pant has created a heated debate of various social media platforms. Whereas some fans supported the squad selected by the BCCI, as they said that IPL cannot be the deciding factor for selecting the national squad.
Though Pant had played some blinders, he has also failed to perform numerous times and after seeing the conditions in England his spot was always in doubt. Dhawan being the highest run scorer in the previous edition of ICC Champions Trophy in 2013, his spot was almost fixed also due to his recent performances in the domestic season.
Although the Indian selectors have the chance to pick the third spinner in the squad and that could have been either Kuldeep Yadav or Yuzvendra Chahal, but seeing the bowling conditions in England Mohammad Shami was a direct choice in the squad. Anyways, India has Yuvraj Singh and Kedar Jadhav in order to play the role of the third spinner if any situation demands that.
But the bottom line will be, the Indian selectors broke teh hearts of lots of Indian cricket fans who were expecting their favorite players getting a chance back into the Indian team.
