Mohammad Shami Replaces Injured Jaspreet Bumrah In Team India’s Squad For Upcoming T20 World Cup In Australia
Mumbai, 14th October 2022: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary, Jay Shah, quoted in a press release, “The All-India Senior Selection Committee has named Mohammed Shami as Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement in India’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup squad. Shami has reached Australia and will link up with the squad in Brisbane ahead of the warm-up match against Australia on 17th October.” Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur have been named as backups and will travel to Australia shortly.
Bumrah has had a history of back problems due to his slinging unorthodox front-on action, which puts a lot of load on his back. He was ruled out for three months in 2019 with a minor stress fracture, but this time, Bumrah could miss games for up to six months. This year, Bumrah has played only five games each in three formats apart from 14 games for Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League. He was picked up before a complete recovery by Rahul Dravid to get some overs before the World Cup, but it only extended the problems further.
On the other hand, Shami has not played international T20 since the last T20 World Cup and also recovered from Covid-19. However, Shami had a great run for IPL 2022 champions Gujarat Titans, picking 20 wickets in 16 matches at a strike rate of 18.30. His economy was 8.00 RPO. He was Gujarat Titan’s top wicket-taker in the competition. Shami will have to carry out a huge responsibility of stabilising the Indian death over bowling in which they are struggling after Arshdeep Singh, a death over specialist is being read by opposition batsmen.
India squad for ICC T20 World Cup: Rohit Sharma (Captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami.
