Indian Test skipper Virat Kohli is currently indeed having a bad time. The 33-year-old batter finished another year without scoring a century in all formats of the game and now Kohli has failed to secure a berth in the best Test XI for the year 2021 named by Cricket Australia (CA).
In the Boxing Day Test against South Africa, Kohli managed to score just 35 and 18 in first and second innings respectively.
This is the third year Kohli has not scored a century in his international career. Before 2020-21 period, the last century-less year for the Delhi-born batter was in 2008.
Skipper Karunaratne
Cricket Australia, on Friday (December 31), announced the squad which is going to be led by Dimuth Karunaratne. Sri Lanka batter will pair up with India’s Rohit Sharma as two openers.
English Test team skipper Joe Root might have had a horrible time as a captain but he has been in a super form with the bat. He is currently the leading run-scorer of the ongoing Ashes Test series that England are trailing 0-3.
Pakistan’s Fawad Alam had to wait for 11 years to make a comeback to Test cricket and he has grabbed the opportunities with both hands.
Labuschagne the lone Aussie in the squad
The only Australian who was selected for the squad was Marnus Labuschagne. The 27-year-old batter averaged a staggering 65.75 this year with 2 tons and 4 half centuries while scoring a total of 526 runs.
Along with Alam and Root, Labuschagne finds his place in the middle order.
The second Indian cricketer to be selected for the squad has been wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant. The Indian wicketkeeper scored 748 runs at an average of 39.36.
Apart from Sharma and Pant, two other Indians are in the squad. Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel are the rest of the two Indians featuring as spinners in the lineup.
Kiwi bowler Kyle Jamieson and Pakistani bowlers Hasan Ali and Shaheen Shah Afridi are the fast bowlers in the lineup.
The XI
Rohit Sharma, Dimuth Karunaratne (c), Marnus Labuschagne, Joe Root, Fawad Alam, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Kyle Jamieson, Axar Patel, Hasan Ali, Shaheen Shah Afridi
