Indian cricket analyst Harsha Bhogle has picked his test team of the year for 2021 and he has left the Indian captain Virat Kohli out of his team, which is hardly a surprise for anyone these days, given the kind of lean patch Kohli has been going through in test cricket. The Indian no. 4 is averaging just a tad below 30 in the longest format of the game this year, which is nowhere near the standards he has set for himself.
Harsha Bhogle has, however, picked the Indian vice captain Rohit Sharma as the opener of his test team of the year and has also picked two other Indian players in Rishabh Pant and Ravichandran Ashwin, both of whom had a great year in the longest format of the game.
Rohit has been India’s best batsman in test cricket in 2021. Not only did he deliver with the bat in the home test series against England on some of the tricky pitches where the ball was turning a mile, he then went to England and scored plenty of runs against them in their own backyard too and in completely different conditions with the ball seaming around.
As far as Rishabh Pant is concerned, he played that historic knock at the Gabba which won Indian their second ever test series in Australia and he then played a couple of remarkable innings against England at home on the back of his heroic effort in Australia. Although Pant didn’t have a great series with the bat in England when India went their for the return series, his overall numbers still comfortably got him into the test team of the year.
Ravichandran Ashwin is another player who was consistent with the ball in Australia and at home against England and New Zealand. With him being the best spinner in the world at the moment and the no. 2 bowler in the world in ICC rankings, his spot in the test team of the year was never in doubt.
Harsha Bhogle has picked Marnus Labuschagne and Joe Root to bat at no. 3 and 4
The other players Harsha Bhogle picked in his team are Dimuth Karunaratne to open the batting with Rohit Sharma, the no. 1 batsman in the world Marnus Labuschagne to bat at 3, the England captain Joe Root who scored more than 1700 runs this year to bat at 4, Pakistan’s steady middle order batsman Fawad Alam to bat at 5 and the former West Indies captain Jason Holder as the specialist allrounder of the side.
Here is Harsha Bhogle’s test team of the year that he picked on Cricbuzz –
Rohit Sharma, Dimuth Karunaratne, Marnus Labuschagne, Joe Root, Fawad Alam, Rishabh Pant, Jason Holder, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Anrich Nortje, Kyle Jamieson
