Following the announcement of India‘s 15-man squad for the One-Day International World Cup by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), cricket enthusiasts and industry professionals have been providing their opinions on both the players who were chosen and those who were not.
Shardul Thakur has been selected to play for the team, and it is anticipated that he would provide assistance to Hardik Pandya in the role of a fast-bowling all-rounder. However, Kris Srikkanth, who won the World Cup in 1983, has been critical of the BCCI selectors for choosing the Mumbai cricketer. Srikkanth has pointed out that the Mumbai bowler rarely bowls his complete quota of overs and does not score enough runs with the bat. The 63-year-old believes that India should have brought in a bowler who specialised in the position instead.
Everyone is insisting that we need a hitter at number eight, but who needs a batter at number eight? Even though Shardul Thakur bowls for less than ten overs, he only has ten runs to show for his efforts. How many overs did he bowl during the match versus Nepal? 4 only. Performances against teams like the West Indies or Zimbabwe are the ones you should focus on.
, if he does a good job, then you should store that in the back of your mind, but you shouldn’t give that any importance. Instead, put more of an emphasis on how you performed versus teams like Australia or New Zealand. This is why I suggest that you shouldn’t let yourself be mislead by overall averages; instead, you should always look at individual matches,” the former top selector for the BCCI remarked on Star Sports.
In order to prove his claim, Kris Srikkanth used the fact that the Indian national team that won the World Cup in 2011 included some reserve players.
“Take a look at the team that competed in the 2011 World Cup. Do you want to know who the reserves were? In addition to Yusuf Pathan, the lineup included two spinners (R Ashwin and Piyush Chawla), a medium-pace bowler (Munaf Patel), and a medium-pace pacer (Munaf Patel).”
In the year 2023, Shardul played in nine one-day internationals and collected 15 wickets. However, he has only scored 48 runs with the bat in five innings, with a 9.60 batting average and a strike rate of 97.95.