According to reports, Jasprit Bumrah is in contention to be included in India’s squad for the Asia Cup 2025. Meanwhile, both Shubman Gill and Axar Patel are in the race to be the vice-captain of the T20I format.
After an impressive captaincy stint in the England series, Shubman Gill has been the flavour of the season, but will be facing a contender in Axar Patel for the vice-captaincy for the Asia Cup T20 schedule.
Jasprit Bumrah is set to play in the tournament and might be rested for the opening test against the West Indies in early October.
Ajit Agarkar-led selection committee is likely to select and unveil the India squad for the continental tournament on August 19 or 20, depending upon the BCCI Centre of Excellence’s (CoE) Sports Science team sends the list of players, including that of skipper Suryakumar Yadav, who has already started batting at the nets in Bengaluru.
There will be some tough selection calls but the Indian selectors would certainly like to maintain continuity which has given them a lot of success from the time Suryakumar Yadav over as T20 captain.
Axar was the designated vice-captain during India’s last series against England at home, Gill was deputy when Suryakumar was appointed as full-time skipper of the T20 squad in Sri Lanka last year.
The selection committee will not likely to tinker with the setup as Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma and Hardik Pandya form a solid top five.
“Abhishek Sharma is world’s No. 1 T20 batter in last ICC rankings. Sanju Samson has been fantastic last season with both bat and gloves.”
“So it will certainly be a tough call but Shubman in current form (although in Tests) can’t be ignored. He had a good IPL also. Problem for selectors is, there are too many performers at the top of the order,” said a BCCI source.
With many players in top spot, it will be difficult for Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sai Sudharsan to make a cut.
Even KL Rahul, who is now the first choicekeeper in ODIs, is unlikely to be considered as he doesn’t bat in the middle order.
With Sanju Samson being considered as the primary wicket keeper, the choice for the second Wk will be among Jitesh Sharma and Dhruv Jurel.
Despite Jurel was part of the last T20I series, Jitesh had been impressive for RCB during their IPL winning campaign. He has also emerged as finisher.
Meanwhile Hardik Pandya has been the first choice of White-ball seam bowling all-rounder as Nitish Reddy suffered injury during the England series and is highly unlikely to get fit in time.
Shivam Dube who made a comeback against England, is likely to find his place in the squad. Meanwhile Axar Patel and Washington Sundar are set to be the other two-spin bowling all-rounder in the squad.
There will be a huge race between Jasprit Bumrah and Arshdeep Singh have locked their slots. The third slot is a fight between Prasidh Krishna, who has 25 wickets in last IPL and Harshit Rana, who has ability to bowl some really heavy deliveries.
