As the Indian team under the captaincy of Shikhar Dhawan gears up to face Sri Lanka in the first ODI of the three-match series on July 18, eminent commentator Harsha Bhogle has come up with his predicted playing XI for the T20I series and ODI series to be played at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.
Due to the first-choice players in England for the five-Test series including the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah, and others, the BCCI was forced to send a new-look Indian team to Sri Lanka for a series of 3 ODIs and 3 T20I matches. The T20I series begins from July 25 onwards.
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The new-look team has several IPL superstars with Shikhar Dhawan named captain and Bhuvneshwar Kumar being picked as his deputy. Harsha Bhogle mentioned that he is excited to see how the next generation of Indian players will perform.
Bhogle picked his playing XI while in conversation with Cricbuzz.com and picked Shikhar Dhawan and Prithvi Shaw as the openers of the team. He then went with Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, and Ishan Kishan in the middle order.
He reasoned that Ishan Kishan, since he is a left-hander, brings the variety in the all right-handed batting lineup after Shikhar Dhawan, right until Hardik Pandya, who was chosen as the finisher.
He then went with either right-handed all-rounder K Gowtham or left-hander Krunal Pandya at the no.7 spot. He said that he will pick one of them depending on the number of left-handers Sri Lanka plays in their lineup.
He then chose Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Deepak Chahar as the fast bowlers, who he felt were a must. He then interestingly picked Varun Chakravarthy over Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav in the XI due to his numbers in the IPL 2020 and 2021.
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He then gave the last spot to Rahul Chahar despite having similar numbers in the IPL since 2020 as Yuzvendra Chahal.
Harsha Bhogle then spoke about the ODI team that will face Sri Lanka and made a couple of changes bringing in Manish Pandey in place of Ishan Kishan.
He said that given the anchoring role Pandey plays, he would have the freedom to do so with Suryakumar Yadav and Sanju Samson coming before him and Hardik Pandya coming after him to do the big-hitting.
He kept his choice of either Gowtham or Krunal in the all-rounder spot. However, the big change for the ODI team was that he went with Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal in the 50-over format in place of Varun Chakravarthy and Rahul Chahar in the T20Is.
He said that both Chahal and Kuldeep should play all three ODI matches, irrespective of the performances.
Here is Harsha Bhogle’s Predicted India playing XI for T20Is :
Shikhar Dhawan (C), Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson, Hardik Pandya, K Gowtham/Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy, Rahul Chahar
Here is Harsha Bhogle’s Predicted India playing XI for ODIs :
Shikhar Dhawan (C), Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, K Gowtham/Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal
(Cricbuzz inputs)
