India T20 World Cup Squad Announced : MS Dhoni to mentor, Chahal and Dhawan miss out

The Indian squad for the T20 World Cup has been announced. All the Indian fans were waiting for this announcement. Since the teams like Australia and Pakistan had announced their squads already. The selection has raised quite many eyebrows since senior players like Dhawan and Chahal have been excluded.

Dhawan, the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy Man of the Tournament, and also an all-time leading run-scorer in IPL, wasn’t able to make it in the squad. Instead, Ishan Kishan has been selected in his place. Also, in the race between the leg spinners Rahul Chahar and Yuzvendra Chahal, the rather inexperienced Rahul Chahar has made the cut.Off spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, who last played a T20I for India back in July 2017, has made his place in the squad.

MS Dhoni to be India’s Mentor

Dhoni is among the most successful captains in the history of limited-overs cricket, and not just Indian cricket. In fact, he is the only captain to have won all three ICC trophies in white-ball cricket. After leading India to T20 World Cup glory in the tournament’s inaugural edition in 2007, Dhoni captained India to victory in the 2011 50-over World Cup as well as the 2013 Champions Trophy. Dhoni was the man of the match for his unbeaten 91 in the 2011 World Cup final. Also, Dhoni has won three IPL seasons with CSK as a captain. His captaincy tactics and smart moves are well known.

One of the most special moments of his captaincy remains the 2016 World Cup’s match against Bangladesh. Since only 2 runs were required off one ball, Dhoni, being the genius as he is, took off gloves so that he can run the batsman out. And that’s what exactly happened. He ran out the Bangladeshi batsman and successfully helped India to defend the low score.His another genius moment was in the inaugural edition which frankly remains the beginning of his mastermind moves.

Since Harbhajan was extremely costly in that match, Dhoni gave the ball to Joginder Sharma in the last over. This move seemed bizarre at that moment. However, Joginder pulled it somehow and Dhoni’s discussion with him in between surely helped the inexperienced pacer.

Tough Luck for Shikhar Dhawan

Dhawan was the leading run-scorer in the ongoing IPL 2021.He had also captained India against Sri Lanka recently.In fact,he had improved his strike rate too drastically for the team’s benefit.Indian fans are disappointed over this exclusion since they were used to seeing Rohit and Dhawan open for India.

India’s T20 World Cup squad

Virat Kohli (Capt), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Rahul Chahar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohd Shami.

Standby players – Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar.