Former Indian captain Kris Srikkanth lashed out at the selection committee for picking a full-strength squad for the upcoming T20I series against Afghanistan. Team India will play against their Asian rivals in three T20Is, starting September 13 as well. Srikkanth also believes India have selected their strongest squad because of their recent poor T20I results as well. After winning the T20 World Cup earlier in the year, India suffered 0-2 and 0-4 T20I series losses to Ireland and England as well.
While they bounced back with a 3-0 win in the T20I series in Zimbabwe, they have gone for caution over experimentation in
picking the squad for the Afghanistan series as well.
Talking about this, Srikkanth said on his YouTube channel, “After the series losses in Ireland and England, the selectors have decided not to take a chance and picked a full-strength squad for Afghanistan. They are going all guns blazing, but this is a mistake. It’s against teams like Afghanistan that you should try out youngsters. Instead, you’ve picked a full-strength squad out of fear. It feels like a desperation move after the Ireland and England losses. But this squad is almost the same as the one they picked for England.”
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Kris Srikkanth also questioned the inclusion of several players returning from injury in the Indian squad without proving their fitness in a match as well. The 15-member squad for the Afghanistan series has four players: Jasprit Bumrah,
Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, and Washington Sundar, subject to fitness clearances as well.
“These four have not proved match-fitness. So on what basis are they subject to fitness? Just because you prove your fitness at the Bengaluru CoE, are you fit? That’s how Harshit Rana went to England, and then what happened to him there? So match-fitness is important,” said Srikkanth.
“This is not a question of ability. Harshit Rana has proved to be a very good bowler in T20s, and Nitish Kumar Reddy is brilliant in the short format. But why pick them without match-fitness being proven is the question,” he concluded.
