Yashasvi Jaiswal was dropped from India's final Champions Trophy 2025 squad after being initiall named.
India captain Rohit Sharma has revealed that not one, but two players played a role in the eventual dropping of Yashasvi Jaiswal from the Men in Blue squad for the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy. Jaiswal had been included in India’s preliminary squad for the 2025 Champions Trophy, only to be dropped in favour of spinner Varun Chakravarthy before the February 12 deadline.
Replacing batter Yashasvi Jaiswal with spinner Varun Chakravarthy raised eyebrows, but Rohit explained the reason behind that decision.
“With Varun (Chakravarthy), especially, we felt we had to sacrifice a batsman, which we thought it’s only five games in this tournament. And it’s very unlikely that that batter is going to play at any stage, unless there’s an injury,” Rohit aid at the pre-match press conference in Dubai on Monday, a day before the Champions Trophy semi-final against Australia.
“And you don’t make team thinking the worst, which is someone getting injured. If somebody is injured, you can always call them upon. But with Varun, we knew that there is a chance that he might play without any injury in the team. I know there are four spinners and all of that, but we played four spinners today,” he added.
Several matches have been played in Dubai in the past few months, making the pitches slower in nature. Rohit also said that if India needed an extra batter, they had that option in Rishabh Pant.
“So, looking at the surfaces here, hearing about what has happened in Dubai in the past two months. There’s a lot of cricket that has been played. So, we somehow kind of knew that the surfaces are going to be slow. We were watching ILT20, which was played here. And we thought the slower bowlers will be a lot more helpful,” noted the 37-year-old.
“And then we’ve got a batter sitting in the dugout anyway. And if we need a batter to come in, Rishabh (Pant) is there for us. So, we thought with an extra option of the spin, there’s always a chance that we can play those guys. So that was pretty much the thinking behind that,” commented Rohit.
Varun played his first match of this tournament during India’s final Group A match against New Zealand in Dubai on Sunday. He finished with impressive figures of 5/42 as India dismissed New Zealand for 209, thus completing a 44-run win. A knock of 79 from Shreyas Iyer had led India to 249/9 from 50 overs after they were put into bat by the Kiwis.
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