Deep Dasgupta, former Indian wicket-keeper, reacted to the squad announced by the BCCI for India’s upcoming white-ball tour of Sri Lanka in July. On June 10, the BCCI announced a 25 man squad, with 5 net bowlers included, for the tour with Shikhar Dhawan donning the captaincy role.
The Indian cricket team is set to play a 3 match ODI series followed by a T20 series consisting of the same number of matches. With a lot of options at their disposal, the BCCI decided to take the easy way out by picking most of them, according to Dasgupta.
Maybe could have included two more players – Deep Dasgupta
The commentator was disappointed with the exclusion of a couple of players namely, Jaydev Unadkat and Rahul Tewatia. He went on to question what mistakes they committed to not be selected in the squad.
“Maybe could have included two more players, what did they do wrong? Players like Jaydev Unadkat and even Rahul Tewatia, who was part of the squad during the last series, could have been included. It wouldn’t have made a difference if the size was 27 instead of 25,” he said.
Deep Dasgupta was surprised with the selection of 5 spinners in the squad. He pointed out that the selection panel failed to make the tough calls and instead, decided to take everybody regardless of whether they’ll get any playing time or not.
“Seems like everyone’s there. Seeing five spinners in the squad is surprising. Feels like wherever there was a tough call to make to pick 2 or 3 players for a role, they avoided the problem by just taking everybody instead,” he assessed.
Talking about the captaincy role, Deep Dasgupta felt that Shikhar Dhawan was the right call considering the amount of experience he has. However, he also mentioned if Shreyas Iyer was available for selection, maybe he would have been the better choice considering he could be a future captain.
“They went with seniority. It was expected however, considering he [Shikhar] was bound to be selected. Maybe if Shreyas Iyer was available then the situation would have been different. And Bhuvi is the vice-captain which also seems like a sensible choice.”
One thing that stood out for Dasgupta was the selection of Manish Pandey. He felt his role in the side has not been explained for years and the panel doesn’t have a plan for him going forward.
“Another interesting name is Manish Pandey. Interesting because I don’t understand what the selectors want to do with him. Is he part of the scheme of things or not? In Australia, he was with the team, in England he wasn’t. So I’m a little confused as to what’s happening with him,” Deep Dasgupta concluded.
