Ashish Nehra, Shikhar Dhawan and Dinesh Karthik’s return to India’s squad for the Twenty20 series against India may have stolen headlines but the absence of Ravindra Jadeja remains a big talking point. Especially considering the fact that he has been the torch-bearer of India’s spin bowling unit in limited overs’ formats for the last couple of years.
Ever since Ravi Shastri’s return as India head coach, Jadeja hasn’t featured in India’s blues. It was understandable that Jadeja was given a break from the limited overs’ leg of the Sri Lanka tour.
However, when he was omitted for the ODI series against Australia, chief selector M.S.K. Prasad termed he was “rested”. However, moments later, Jadeja referred to it as a “setback” on social media.
That Jadeja had been dropped was underlined when the “rested” spinner was brought in as back-up ahead of the first ODI following an injury scare to Axar Patel. But once Axar recovered, Jadeja was released from the squad after the third match in Indore.
With the spin troika of Axar, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav putting in an impressive performance, it was clear that Jadeja would continue to be sidelined even for the T20s. No wonder then that Saurashtra had provisionally selected him for its Ranji Trophy opener, which clashes with the T20 series, well before the squad was officially announced late on Sunday night.
Jadeja’s absence from the squad, let alone team, continues to baffle since the Indian team under Virat Kohli has followed a trend of an injured or rested player regaining his place in the starting XI as soon as he is available for selection. That the same rule hasn’t been applied to Jadeja indicates that he has lost his place in the side for reasons other than workload management.
T20 squad: Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), Shikhar Dhawan, K.L. Rahul, Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik, M.S. Dhoni (wk), Hardik Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashish Nehra, and Axar Patel.