Mohammed Shami has replaced injured Jasprit Bumrah in the 15-member Indian squad for the T20 World Cup 2022, starting October 16 in Australia. Bumrah was ruled out of the tournament due to back injury.
Deepak Chahar, who was among the stand-by players, was also in contention to replace Bumrah but he too got injured. Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur are now named as backups and will travel to Australia shortly.
“The All-India Senior Selection Committee has named Mohammed Shami as Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement in India’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup squad. Shami has reached Australia and will link up with the squad in Brisbane ahead of the warm-up matches. Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur have been named as backups and will travel to Australia shortly,” the BCCI said in a statement on Friday.
Shami had last played in T20I during the last edition of the ICC T20 World Cup in the UAE. While he has been exceptionally effective in Tests and ODIs in the last four years, his T20 performances haven’t been good. There’s no denying the fact that he’s a veritable wicket-taker and has the ability to extract prodigious seam movement.
But in white-ball cricket, he often leaks a lot of runs. While this is acceptable in the ODIs because he snaffles heaps of wickets, this hasn’t been the case in the T20s. Moreover, he has played only 17 T20Is in the last 10 years which shows lack of experience in this format.
On the brighter side, Shami bowled with gusto and racked up 20 wickets in the IPL 2022 to emerge as the highest wicket-taker for Gujarat Titans. Clearly, his creditable performance in the cash-rich league tipped the scales in his favour.
At present, death-overs bowling is India’s biggest issue. The problem has become more pronounced with the absence of Bumrah. Bhuvneshwar Kumar is bowling nicely with the new-ball but has been dreadful in the death overs in 2022. Arshdeep Singh and Harshal Patel are still greenhorns in international cricket.
In such a scenario, India will be banking on Shami to step up to the plate and spearhead their pace bowling attack. India will start their T20 World Cup campaign on October 23 with a match against arch-rivals Pakistan.
India squad for T20 World Cup: Rohit Sharma (captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami