Last week, the BCCI selection committee announced Team India’s 15-member squad for the upcoming five-match T20I series against the West Indies.

While young batters like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Tilak Varma earned their maiden India call-ups, Jitesh Sharma’s non-selection raised a lot of eyebrows.

Playing for Punjab Kings (PBKS), Jitesh has done exceptionally well in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the last couple of seasons, amassing 543 runs from 26 matches at a strike rate of 159.24 to put himself in the reckoning for national selection.

However, the wicketkeeper-batter is not losing his sleep after the snub, saying that God had bigger plans for him.

“Just one sentence, ‘God has a bigger plan for me’,” Jitesh was quoted as saying by Cricket.com.

The Ajit Agarkar-led selection panel overlooked Jitesh Sharma and went ahead with both Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson as wicketkeeping options in the T20I squad.

Earlier this year, Jitesh was roped in as a replacement for injured Sanju Samson for the white-ball series against Sri Lanka and New Zealand but did not get a chance to feature in the playing XI.

The 29-year-old opened up on his conversations with head coach Rahul Dravid while being part of the Indian squad.

“They were quite welcoming. Rahul (Dravid) sir told me that you are doing very well and these are the kind of players that we are looking for. When I told him that I want to score big runs, he told me that at the position you play, runs don’t matter, impact matters. The more you contribute towards the win, that will be important for the team.

“When there’s a collapse and you go out to bat around 7-8 overs, the team will be 4-5 wickets down, so you can’t do much and just need to believe in your game. You have to take that score to a certain level so that the team can fight for it,” he remarked.