Sunil Gavaskar ponders the choice of Umesh Yadav over Deepak Chahar.
Sunil Gavaskar ponders the choice of Umesh Yadav over Deepak Chahar. Umesh Yadav is 34 and is in the business for over a decade. He still looked like a new player. He is fast, unpredictable, and good at taking wickets. So after Mohammed Shami tested positive for Covid, it was surprising that they picked him for the Indian team. What was even more surprising was that they chose him over Deepak Chahar. Chahar was a standby for the T20 World Cup.
In the first T20I against Australia in Mohali, Umesh Yadav played pretty well. He was playing his first international T20 in three years. Umesh got rid of dangerous-looking Smith (35) and Glenn Maxwell (1) in three deliveries to turn the match in India’s favor. But it wasn’t enough, and India lost the game by four wickets.
However, Sunil Gavaskar, who served as captain of India in the past, has a different opinion! He pondered over why they chose Umesh for the T20 World Cup rather than Deepak Chahar, who is on the reserve squad.
Gavaskar’s take
“I think it’s the best addressed to team management to what their thinking was to take someone like Umesh Yadav, who is not even in the reserves and not playing Deepak Chahar,” Gavaskar told Sports Today.
“Deepak Chahar is also coming out of an injury. But you need to have the leg mile under your belt before you go into a big tournament like the World Cup. If you go as Deepak Chahar a standby bowler and suddenly in Australia somebody gets injured, he is not going to do a proper job because he wouldn’t get the rhythm.”
“So that is a question best addressed at the next media conference to the team management as to why they picked Umesh Yadav and not Deepak Chahar. Unless Chahar had a niggle, which we don’t know anything about,” said Gavaskar.
On Friday, they look forward to the second game of the three-game series in Nagpur.