Cricket's next grand festival, the Twenty20 world cup, kicks off in a month's time. Teams are starting to announce their squads and there is a lot of talk & interest surrounding it. The absence of some of the star players like Bairstow, Jofra, Dussen, Russell, and Narine from this edition due to injuries and a variety of other factors will definitely take the spice out of it. However, the squads are filled with young talent and some experienced players will be returning to the national team. More Multinational tournaments are the need of the hour because they have always added flavor to an otherwise monotonous calendar year filled with meaningless bilaterals.
As an example, the recent Asia Cup provided viewers with a sense of excitement, and the T20 World Cup is going to be no different, with some of these players too good to miss.
Here are the 3 Batters to watch out for:
Tim David (Australia)
Another player to watch out for is the 25-year-old all-rounder Tim David. Though he has represented Singapore 14 times at the T20 level, he was on Cricket Australia’s radar for the upcoming WT20 since the past year and is all set to make his intl debut on the 20th Sept at Mohali against India. 282 runs at a strike rate of 146 in CPL 2021, 218 runs at SR 163 in 2021/22 BBL and 251 runs at SR 199 in PSL 2022, 186 runs at 216 SR in IPL 2022 were the last 4 T20 assignments for David where he came out with flying colors. The strike rates are too good for a batter playing as a finisher. The Maxwell - David Combo at the death screams destruction in the end overs.
Alex Hales (England)
A shocking recall to the England squad, Alex Hales was named to replace the injured Jonny Bairstow, who met an accident on the golf course earlier this month. The exclusion of Hales came at the eve of the 2019 World Cup after he failed a recreational drug test. In addition, his exclusion was justified by trust issues and almost half of the squad voted to drop him.
In a way, the recent events have opened a new door for Hales out of the blue, Morgan's retirement, Roy's dropping, and then Bairstow's injury have paved his way back into the team. Hales was never out of the side for cricketing reasons. He has a strike rate of 161 in 2022, which is the 10th best in the world for a batter with a minimum of 500 runs, and recently surpassed the 10K runs mark in the T20s.
He has a good amount of experience playing in Australia in the Big Bash League and was the top scorer in the 20-21 season with 543 runs at 160 SR. Buttler and Hales could be nothing less than box office at the top.
Rilee Rossouw (South Africa)
While playing for SA between 2014 and 2016, he was touted as the country's next batting superstar. However, things didn't go as planned, and he signed a Kolpak deal with Hampshire in 2017. A little more than 6 years after he last played for his country, he made his return in July 2022 against England. His 96 at Cardiff almost booked him a seat on that plane to Australia. A left-handed middle-order batter who can play spin is an asset to any side.
Rossouw had to end ties with Hampshire as they didn't retain him as an overseas player and after UK's exit from the EU, he could no longer play as a local player. With 623 runs at a mind-boggling SR of 192, Rossouw finished as the 2nd highest run scorer in the Blast season.
Before that, he had an equally good outing in PSL by scoring runs at an avg of 40 and an SR of 167. A middle-order lineup of Rossouw, Markram, Miller, and Stubbs makes SA one of the favorites of the tournament.
