The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has finally declared the 15-memeber squad for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017. After hopping the deadline and alarming to pull out of the tournament, the BCCI decide to take part in the mega event and announced the squad in the larger interest of the game.
India’s squad for CT 2017: Virat Kohli (c), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, MS Dhoni (wk), Yuvraj Singh, Kedar Jadhav, Hardik Pandya, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Manish Pandey
However, the Indian selectors have disappointed most of the fans, who were expecting the selection of Gautam Gambhir. The KKR skipper has batted exceptionally well for his team with some fo his watch-winning performances. After KL Rahul was reported as unfit for the tournament, many former cricketers like Sourav Ganguly and Ravi Shastri predicted a comeback of Gambhir. But, keeping all other theories aside, the selectors went for Ajinkya Rahane, who has been in terrible form in IPL 2017, to say the least.
In the longest format of the game, Rahane is a very fine batsman but his record in ODIs, he is way below the expectations. In 73 ODI matches, he has scored 2237 runs at an average of 32.42. His last 5 scores in ODI cricket are 1, 20, 57, 5, 28.
Over the years, Gambhir has been KKR’s batting mainstay in IPL and he has scored runs on a consistent basis at the domestic level. But due to rigorous competition for the opening slot and successful combination of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan, Gambhir’s performances wasn’t enough to push selectors for a spot in the national squad.
Dhawan was previously dropped for India’s last ODI series against England, but after seeing his consistent performances in the ongoing IPL 2017 and he has sealed hs position at the top of the order. But, on the other hand, Rahane has scored 248 runs at a poor average of 20.66. Whereas Gautam Gambhir 425 runs at an average of 47.22.
Now, if IPL performances were regarded as a parameter to assess Shikhar Dhawan’s form, it is hard to explain why Gambhir was overlooked despite his good form and experience of playing in England.
It seems that the Indian selectors have also seen some of the performances in Deodhar trophy and Vijay Trophy, as in the former tournament, Dhawan was the second highest run-scorer, while, Gambhir was not even in teh the-10 list. Now, we can only hope that the Indian selection committee has taken the right decision of selecting the players and Indian team will successfully retain the Champions Trophy, which was earned in 2013
