Legendary India batter Sunil Gavaskar has named his preferred India playing XI for their first T20 World Cup 2024 match against Ireland. India will play Ireland on June 5 at the Nassau County Cricket Ground in New York.

This will be India's first international game in the format since their win in the home series against Afghanistan earlier in January this year.

Ahead of the match, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar, like many other veteran cricketers, shared his thoughts on the possible playing XI that captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid might select for the match against Ireland.

Rather than going with a left-right combination at the top of the batting order, Gavaskar revealed his ideal combination to Star Sports and picked Virat Kohli as Rohit's opening partner.

"The way Kohli has batted, particularly the second half of the IPL, he deserves to open the batting with Rohit Sharma, the captain. Seriously, good players are good players. They can bat anywhere, you know whether they're right and left hand," Gavaskar had earlier said.

"I don't really like selecting teams because you cannot satisfy everybody. There will always be somebody's favourite player who is not being picked. Here's my effort to try and pick the eleven for the game against Ireland,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.

"Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj," Gavaskar listed out his preferred line-up for India XI.

It was also odd that Arshdeep, a left-arm pacer, was left out of the starting eleven. Arshdeep had the best numbers among Indian bowlers in the warm-up game against Bangladesh, taking 2 for 12 in three overs.

Here is the video: