Former India captain and chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar has said that the Indian team management should not have experimented with their playing XI in the recent Asia Cup 2022 and instead played with a winning combination.
India failed to qualify for the final of the Asia Cup 2022 after losing to Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the Super 4s stage of the tournament. But they ended their Asia Cup on a high after defeating Afghanistan in which Virat Kohli scored his maiden T20I ton and 71st international century which came after almost three years.
Speaking on India's chop-and-change policy, former India selector Dilip Vengsarkar feels that multi-team events like the Asia Cup are not a ground for experimentation.
"The team is going ahead with their experiments. They picked Dinesh Karthik, but they haven't played him, and then they played Ravichandran Ashwin for the first time yesterday (Tuesday) against Sri Lanka. Obviously, the team management wants to give all the players a chance as they are trying to find their best XI for next month's World Cup. But then this event is also very important. The Asia Cup is a very big tournament," Vengsarkar told Khaleej Times.
"Winning matches in a tournament like this is very important for the morale of the team. Also, I think it's important to have the winning combination. As I said, the Asia Cup is a very big event. You can experiment maybe in a bilateral series, but the Asia Cup and the World Cup, these are major tournaments. In these tournaments, you need to win, that's very important," he added.
India will now play in three T20Is each against Australia and South Africa at home before traveling to Australia for the T20 World Cup 2022. India will play Pakistan in their opening match of the tournament on October 23 at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
