On April 30, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced India’s T20 World Cup 2024 squad. The most notable exclusion from the squad was Rinku Singh who has been the most recent casuality of the impact player rule in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024. Shivam Dube was preferred over Rinku in the 15-member squad. The decision did not sit well with former Indian cricketer Ambati Rayudu who faced a shocking snub before ODI World Cup 2019. Rayudu said that the selectors did not have cricketing sense and focused on statistics. Rayudu also accused the selectors of giving important to likability on social media over cricketing ability.
“Rinku Singh’s omission clearly indicates stats rule over cricketing sense.. who in this selected Indian has been walking out in the 16 th and 17 th over in a t20 game in the last 2 years and playing fluently with a high strike rate and can win a game except Ravindra Jadeja.. he is a big miss.. quality should come before quantity and most importantly cricketing ability should come before likability on Instagram,” Rayudu wrote on his X account.
Rinku has been included in the list of reserve players for the marquee event. However, there is a chance that Rinku gets picked in the squad if a middle-order batter gets injured during the IPL 2024 or T20 World Cup 2024.
The 26-year-old has yet to fire in the IPL 2024 for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). He has 123 runs from nine games at an average of 20.50. His strike rate is 150.
However, the Aligarh-born batter has scored 356 runs from 11 innings at an average of 89 including two half-centuries. His strike rate at the international stage is 176.23.
India’s T20 World Cup squad
Rohit Sharma (c), Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Hardik Pandya (vc), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.
Reserves - Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan.
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