MUMBAI: Almost 14 months after he last played for India, in the 2023 ODI World Cup final against Australia at Ahmedabad on November 19 before he was sidelined due to an ankle injury which needed surgery and then swelling in his knees, veteran pacer Mohammed Shami is back. According to reliable sources, the 34-year-old, who was out of the Indian team for a long time due to a knee injury, has been picked for the five-match T20I series at home against England, which will start from Jan 22 at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
The other big development is the exclusion of star wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant from this team, with the in-form Sanju Samson being preferred, along with Dhruv Jurel. During the T20I series against South Africa in November last year, Samson had become the first Indian cricketer to score back-to-back centuries in T20 Internationals when he scored 107 runs off 50 balls, with seven fours and ten sixes, following up on his 40-ball hundred against Bangladesh.
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With fears around ace pacer Jasprit Bumrah’s injury being serious, it’s now almost certain that Shami will also be picked for the three-match ODI series against England, and the ICC Champions Trophy after that, in what will be a huge boost to India’s pace attack.
As expected, Bumrah, who suffered a back injury during the fifth and final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at Sydney due to his heavy workload, and his fellow fast bowler sMohammed Siraj, who too played in all the Tests of the series, have been given a break from the series, while express pacer Mayank Yadav is out due to a back injury which caused him to miss the T20I series against South Africa last year too.
Even as Bumrah fired all cylinders, India felt Shami’s absence heavily in the recently-concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which they lost 3-1. For the past couple of months, there was some drama and lack of clarity around Shami’s fitness status. During the BGT, Indian captain Rohit Sharma had urged the BCCI’s National Cricket Academy to issue a statement to give clarity on Shami’s fitness status.
A BCCI release on December 23 had stated: “Based on the current medical assessment, the BCCI medical team has determined that his knee requires more time for controlled exposure to bowling loads. Consequently, he has not been deemed fit for consideration for the remaining two Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.”
However, since his return from injury, Shami has been bowling consistently across formats for Bengal in domestic cricket -he played a match in the Ranji Trophy, and then in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Troohy, and then took five wickets in three matches in the Vijay Hazare Trophy.
Besdies Shami’s return, there were not many surprises when the national selection committee, led by former India pacer Ajit Agarkar, met at a five-star hotel here on Saturday to pick the Indian team for the T20I series.
The selectors have only picked the T20 side as of now, while the selection of the three-match ODI series against England-the ODIs are supposed to be played on Feb 6, 9 & 12- and the provisional squad for the ICC Champions Trophy in Dubai and Pakistan will be done later.
TOI understands that as per the ICC rule, all the teams are supposed to submit their provisional squads by 23.59 om on Jan 12, but the BCCI is likely to ask for an extension in that regard. Normally, all the teams are supposed to submit their provisional squads a month in advance, but this time the ICC has stretched that period to five weeks. Of course, the teams are allowed to change their squads later.
The Champions Trophy starts in Pakistan-UAE from February 19.
Punjab and Punjab Kings’ left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh and mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy will spearhead the bowling attack in the T20Is, with explosive batsman Suryakumar Yadav leading the side.
Allrounder Nitish Kumar Reddy, who performed well in the Border-Gavaskar series in Australia recently, scoring 298 runs @37.25 in five Tests including a century at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground in the fourth Test, has been included in the T20I squad, and so has been off-spinning allrounder Washington Sundar and prolific opener Yashasvi Jaiswal (top run-getter in the 2024-25 BGT with 391 runs@43.44 in five Tests).
