When the squads for Sri Lanka tour were announced, Ruturaj Gaikwad was one of the notable absentees. Gaikwad scored 133 runs from three innings on Zimbabwe tour, that too batting out of his position but could not make the cut. Many questioned his absence from the squad but former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batter Subramaniam Badrinath went one step ahead and said that a cricketer needs to have a ‘bad guy image’ to make it into the team.
“Sometimes it seems like you need a bad guy image when the likes of Rinku Singh, Ruturaj Gaikwad and others are not selected for the Indian team. It seems that you need to be in a relationship with some Bollywood actresses, have a good media manager, and have body tattoos,” Badrinath said on his YouTube show, Cric Debate With Badri and was quoted as saying my MyKhel Tamil.
It is not clear whether Badrinath was trying to joke about the selection criterion or not but he was visibly unhappy with Gaikwad not travelling with head coach Gautam Gambhir on his first assignment.
Gaikwad was also rested for the final T20I of the five-T20I series which India won by 4-1. Riyan Parag was picked over Gaikwad in the squad which had plenty of top-order batters. However, Rinku Singh's snub raised eyebrows.
Earlier, Rinku was dropped from India’s T20 World Cup 2024 squad to make way for Shivam Dube. However, Rinku travelled with the team as part of the reserves. Rinku has played two ODIs so far scoring 55 runs. In his last ODI appearance, he scored 38 runs from just 27 deliveries.
India’s ODI squad:
Rohit Sharma (c), Ꮪhubman Gill (vc), Virat Kohli, KL Rahul (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Shreyas Iyer, Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, Riyan Parag, Axar Patel, Khaleel Ahmed, Harshit Rana
India’s T20I squad:
Suryakumar Yadav (c), Ꮪhubman Gill (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh, Riyan Parag, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Khaleel Ahmed, Mohammed Siraj.
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