Recently, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the ODI and T20I squads for the upcoming away series against the hosts Australia and New Zealand respectively where the former Indian skipper and limited-overs wicketkeeper-batsman MS Dhoni has made his return to the squad. The national chief selector MSK Prasad has now spoken out regarding MS Dhoni’s return to the national squad.

While MS Dhoni’s ODI return was much expected, his T20I return was not that much expected as his availability for the 2020 ICC World T20 is under question. Moreover, recently, Dhoni didn’t feature in the home T20I series against Windies and away T20I series against Australia.

Talking about Dhoni’s return to the national squad, the national chief selector MSK Prasad told in Melbourne, “With regard to MS (Dhoni), we categorically told that he is going to be rested for those six matches so that we can give more time to Dinesh Karthik and Rishabh Pant. So that is the very reason and now they have played quite a few matches so we thought we should now bring back Dhoni into the squad.”

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On the other hand, the young wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant has been excluded from the ODI squads but he has been included in the T20I squad. Talking about his ODI exclusion, Prasad added that they want to keep him fresh and give him a break.

Prasad said, “With regard to Rishabh (Pant), the intensity in which we are playing right now after this series we want to keep him fresh and give him a break. He will have a very good game time 5 ODIs against the visiting England Lions.”

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While the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, which will be held in England and Wales, is just more than five months to go, Prasad claimed that they will now go with all the possible World cup members in the upcoming ODIs.

Prasad said, “As we are coming near to the World Cup we are left with few ODIs. So more or less it is a core team. We have zeroed on 20 members. Only those 20 members will be figuring from now on.”