On the eve of Border-Gavaskar Trophy opener at Nagpur, skipper Rohit Sharma was expected to clear the air over a few spots in playing XI on February 9. But Rohit does not want to reveal the team combination just yet; especially the two spots left unclaimed after a horrific accident ruled out Rishabh Pant for entire series and back injury ruled out Shreyas Iyer from first Test.
In the pre-match press conference, Rohit was asked whether he will include white-ball speciallist Suryakumar Yadav or in-form Shubman Gill to which he replied, “Shubman (Gill) has been in supreme form. He has scored a lot of big hundreds (in ODIs). On the other hand, SKY (Suryakumar Yadav) has shown what he brings to the range, but we have not decided who we will go with.”
The other big question is who will replace Pant in the side. Srikar Bharat is ahead in the pecking order whereas Ishan Kishan can try and play a similar role as Pant’s in the middle-order by taking on the attack.
While Rohit did not announce Pant’s replacement, he said, “We will miss Rishabh Pant but we have guys to fill into he role. We have had a good talk with the batters about their plans and hopefully, we will execute it from tomorrow onwards.”
There have been rumours that India will go into the match with four spinners. “All four are quality spinners, Jadeja and Ashwin played a lot together, Axar and Kuldeep whenever they have got the opportunity they have done well,” the 35-year-old said.
The series will be crucial in deciding whether India will reach the World Test Championship (WTC) 2021-23 final or not. However, Rohit wants to focus on the Nagpur Test and not thinking too far ahead.
“We have not spoken too much about WTC, we want to get into the calculations of that, at the moment we want to focus on the game here and see what we can do here and worry about it later,” he said.
India are currently in the second spot on the WTC points table and need to win three out of four Tests to solidify their spot in the WTC final.
