Gautam Gambhir slammed senior team India members Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah for missing out on the ongoing five-match home T20I series against South Africa.
Gautam Gambhir felt that senior India cricketers – regular captain Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah – should’ve been a part of the ongoing five-match T20I series against South Africa, which got underway in Delhi on Thursday.
Gambhir remarked that all other teams, including visitors South Africa, have been looking up to the T20 World Cup 2023 to be played in Australia in October-November.
His comments came after Aakash Chopra, his former first-class teammate, noted that every South Africa player from the recently concluded IPL 2022 is a part of the series, without worrying about the workload management.
What is India’s best #T20WorldCup XI?
It’s still a while away with the #INDvSA series not having full-strength team, but three from our team sat and picked their XIs.
Whose team do you agree to?
Check the thread ⬇️#Thread #CricketTwitter pic.twitter.com/eqkl9t2r4v
— CricXtasy (@CricXtasy) June 9, 2022
“Every player from South Africa who played in IPL 2022 is part of this series, no player got rest, no workload management,” remarked Aakash Chopra.
“Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli should have played at least three T20 matches and could have taken a break after that, since they had a disastrous IPL,” echoed Gambhir, a key member of India’s victorious T20 World Cup 2007 campaign. “All other teams are preparing for the T20 World Cup except for team India.”
Rohit, Kohli and Bumrah have been named in India’s Test squad for the rescheduled fifth game at Edgbaston next month, alongside other senior members. Both Rohit and Kohli had an underwhelming run in IPL 2022, wherein they aggregated 268 runs at 19.14 and 341 runs at 22.73 respectively, while both maintaining an underwhelming strike-rate.
The current series sees inclusion of various young guns, including uncapped speedsters Umran Malik and Arshdeep Singh.
Meanwhile Rahul Dravid, the team head coach had emphasised on the importance of resting players ahead of a packed international calendar.
“Rohit is our all-format player. It would be unwise to expect everyone to be available all the time. We want them to be fit and fresh as well. There would be times where we would have to rest our big players,” Dravid had said in the pre-match press conference on Wednesday.
