While Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel are the left-arm spinning allrounders in the squad, Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal are the two wrist spinners. On Thursday, captain Rohit Sharma, while trying to avoid giving out too much in terms of team strategy, justified the logic of having picked four spinners and just three pacers in the 15-member squad.
“I don’t want to go too much into details. I’m sure opposition captains are listening to this. I wanted four spinners. We’ve played a lot of cricket there (Caribbean). We know what the conditions are like. With a morning start at 10-10.30am, there’s a little bit of technical aspect involved in this,” Rohit said.
“The reason for picking four spinners is something I won’t reveal now. I wanted four spinners. With two of them being allrounders (Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja) and two attacking options (Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal), it gives you balance. Based on the opposition, we can decide who to play,” the captain stressed.”Maybe when I do the first press conference upon landing, I’ll give more details,” he added.
Dube for middle-order power
After India’s failures in the last two T20 World Cups, it’s clear that Rohit and the selectors wanted someone to do the heavy lifting in the middle overs against spinners, where acceleration has been a big problem.
In that aspect, the skipper is banking on Mumbai allrounder Shivam Dube, who has been in sizzling form for the Chennai Super Kings in the last three IPLs now and has shown the ability to tonk the spinners.
In the IPL so far, Dube has smashed 350 runs in 10 matches at a strike rate of 171.56 (average 50.00), in a tally which includes 26 sixes. In the three-match T20I series against Afghanistan at home in January, he carted 124 runs in three innings at a strike-rate of 158.97.
“The one thing we really looked at was middle-overs hitting. The top-order hitting has been alright, hasn’t been bad, but there are options there as well. In the middle overs, we wanted someone to come and play that role where he can play freely without worrying about who is bowling and who is not. We picked Shivam Dube based on the IPL and a few games before the IPL as well,” Rohit said.
The Indian captain expects Dube to chip in with the ball too, even though he has bowled just one over in this IPL. “I know Shivam has not bowled much, but he’s a seasoned cricketer who bowls a lot of overs in red-ball cricket. If we need Shivam to bowl a few overs, he will bowl. Hardik as well.”
‘In IPL, performances change daily’
Rohit revealed that he had “70-80%” of India’s World Cup-bound squad in his mind before the IPL.
“You make the playing XI in your mind and work around it. The talk of what our final 15 started much before the IPL. In the IPL, performances change every day. Anyone will come and score a hundred or take five wickets.”