This offers a rarity. The best two teams of the tournament are playing the IPL final, but not a single player from Kolkata Knight Riders and/or Sunrisers Hyderabad is part of India’s T20 World Cup squad. KKR’s Rinku Singh will go to the United States and the Caribbean, but only as a reserve player.
Does this mean the players in the 15-member Indian squad have been picked on reputation at the expense of form? It is not so simple. Seven Indians feature among the top 10 run-scorers in this IPL. Among them, Virat Kohli towers over the rest, with 741 runs in 15 matches. He is followed by Ruturaj Gaikwad, the Chennai Super Kings captain, whose team failed to qualify for the knockouts. Gaikwad scored 583 runs in 14 matches. Only Kohli and Sanju Samson (531 runs in 16 matches) have made the T20 World Cup cut from the list of seven. And there’s a reason.
The majority of the Indian batting picked itself. The likes of captain Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant were the automatic picks. Yashasvi Jaiswal got the nod by dint of his talent and reputation, an average IPL notwithstanding. Shivam Dube trumped Rinku because he matched the profile the Indian team management was looking for.
In a way, it appears inexplicable that Rinku wasn’t considered good enough despite scoring 356 runs at an average of 89.00 and a strike-rate of 176.23 in 15 T20Is since making his debut in August last year. It can be argued that his omission was unfair, and the selectors didn’t value the left-hand batter’s performances in bilateral series. Then again, the team wanted a second all-rounder as Pandya’s back-up. Dube’s ability to dominate spin in the middle overs and chip in with a few overs as a bowler – although he barely bowled in this IPL – clinched the deal for him. “Rinku did nothing wrong. He was just unfortunate,” Agarkar said at the post-selection press conference.
Take the case of Abhishek Sharma, the Sunrisers opener, who, along with Travis Head, has set a new template for Powerplay batting in this IPL. Abhishek has scored 482 runs in 15 matches at a whopping strike-rate of 207.75. But the youngster needs a bedding-in period at international level before he can be considered for ICC events. The upcoming Zimbabwe tour in July could be his first opportunity to get a taste of international cricket. Jaiswal, irrespective of his IPL form, has been a proven performer at the highest level and picking him was an easy choice.
“We decided on the core of the team long before the IPL,” Rohit had said at the post-selection presser.
On the bowling front also, only Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal from the list of top 10 wicket-takers at the 2024 IPL made it to the T20 World Cup squad. Bumrah was one of the first names on the team sheet and Chahal’s form, his ability to take big wickets to be precise, was too good to be ignored. Otherwise, the selectors chose to play safe and picked the tried and tested.
After India’s tame surrender in the semi-final of the 2022 T20 World Cup, regeneration became the buzzword and for the next one year or so, the new template was adhered to in terms of selection in bilateral series. But as the 2024 T20 World Cup drew close, the selectors went back to convention. The downside of it is that a lot of out-of-form players are going to the showpiece event, and it needs to be seen if they can raise their game on the big occasion.
During a conversation with senior fast bowler Umesh Yadav, RevSportz asked him about the whole irony of an IPL final without a single Indian World Cup-bound player. Umesh expectedly chose to be non-committal. “This is up to the selectors. Who are we to say, what is right and what is wrong?”
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