India captain Rohit Sharma splashed water on reports of him meeting with head coach Rahul Dravid and BCCI chief selector Ajit Agarkar to discuss the Indian squad for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2024. This meant that the report of Virat Kohli being asked to open for India is also seemingly fake.
According to media reports, the trio met in Mumbai last week to discuss India's T20 World Cup squad selection and Virat Kohli was expected to open the innings for the biennial event, while incumbent T20I vice-captain Hardik Pandya's place in the squad depends on how much he can contribute with his bowling.
Reports also claimed that there are question marks over the places of Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal in the squad while Shivam Dube, owing to his exploits with the bat for CSK down the order, could seal his place in the 15-member squad.
Appearing on the Club Prairie Fire Podcast featuring Adam Gilchrist and Michael Vaughan, Rohit Sharma was asked about India’s T20 World Cup squad makeup and the meeting, but to everyone’s surprise, he said there he had not met anyone.
“Haven’t, I haven’t met anyone. Ajit Agarkar is somewhere in Dubai playing golf and Rahul bhai is actually watching his kid play in Bangalore and he was in Bombay, actually, he was. He got him to play on, you know, on red soil wicket here at CCI just to watch him. That’s about it. We haven’t met, to be honest,” Rohit said on the Club Prairie Fire Podcast.
The Indian captain then stated that anything not coming straight from the horse’s mouth is probably ‘fake’.
“In today’s day and age, unless you hear it from either myself or Rahul himself or Ajit himself or someone from BCCI coming and talking in front of the camera, everything is fake,” he added.
The cut-off date for submitting a preliminary squad for the T20 World Cup is May 1. Teams can then make changes to the squad till May 25, while the tournament begins on June 1. India will play Ireland in their first game on June 5.
