The Indian captain Rohit Sharma has admitted that the way some of the fringe Indian players have performed in the opportunities that they have been given against West Indies and Sri Lanka, it has now made it difficult for the Indian team management to decide who to pick and who to leave out.
Suryakumar Yadav was the player of the series against the West Indies and Shreyas Iyer did it against Sri Lanka. The way the Indian XI is structured at the moment, only one out of Suryakumar and Shreyas gets into the XI when the full strength team is available. However, the kind of form they have shown, it’s hard to ignore any of them.
Shreyas Iyer has been a top-order batsman in the IPL, but in the Indian set-up, he rarely gets an opportunity to bat in top 3 as India has already got some high class top order batsmen. The only reason Shreyas batted at the top against Sri Lanka was because Virat Kohli was rested and KL Rahul was injured.
Generally, when KL Rahul and Kohli are available to play, they bat in top 3 alongside Rohit Sharma and the likes of Shreyas Iyer and Suryakumar Yadav have to bat lower down the order in slightly more difficult positions, where they don’t necessarily get a lot of deliveries to face every game.
Would rather have all the players in form together rather than nobody in form at all: Rohit Sharma
It remains to be seen what kind of decisions, the skipper Rohit Sharma takes when all the first choice players are available and the fringe players are in top form as well. India has to play a couple more T20I series before they head to the T20 World Cup in Australia towards the end of the year.
Speaking in the post match presentation ceremony yesterday after the third T20I against Sri Lanka, Rohit said that it is definitely going to be very difficult for him and the team management to decide who to pick and who to leave out, but they would rather have all the players in form together and creating selection dilemma, rather than neither of them being in form at all.
