In Stats: Shami’s Career and Players Not Selected For World T20

Statistician Arun Gopalakrishnan looks at the Indian team selected for the T20 World Cup through numbers.

• Statistician Arun Gopalakrishnan looks at the Indian team selected for the World T20 through numbers.
  
• Arun felt that the selectors could have considered a variety of names, which include Robin Uthappa Shreyas Iyer, Irfan Pathan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Amit Mishra and Yuzvendra Chahal.
  

The Indian selectors on Friday named the Indian team that will compete in the Asia Cup T20 competition in Bangladesh later next month and the ICC World T20 2016 that will be played in India from March 8. To a large extent, the squad chosen by the national selectors was on expected lines. Virat Kohli, who was given a rest for the home T20 series against Sri Lanka, makes a return to the team at the expense of Manish Pandey, while Mohammed Shami has returned to the Indian squad in place of Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

By and large, 13 players chose themselves into the squad. All the XI who did duty in the 3-0 whitewash of Australia recently retained their places. Add to those XI, Ajinkya Rahane, who less than six months ago captained India on a tour to Zimbabwe and has grown to become a mainstay in the Indian team across formats, and the experienced Harbhajan Singh.

The selectors had to decide which element of the 15-man squad needed additional cover; they could have gone in with a second batsman in the reserves, or looked at a leg-spinner to give the captain an additional option, or looked at a specialist quick bowler or an all-rounder.

As it so happened, the selectors filled in the last two slots with the names of Mohammed Shami and Pawan Negi. The selection of Shami shouldn’t come as a surprise, for he is the one Indian bowler in recent times who has justified the role of being called bowling spearhead. Shami has picked up 87 wickets in the 46 ODIs he’s bowled in and has gone wicketless on only 5 occasions. Once he was expected to recover completely from the hamstring injury that curtailed his tour of Australia, his was going to be an automatic selection.

For the final slot, the selectors could have considered a variety of names:

Robin Uthappa as Reserve Wicket-Keeper Batsman

Shreyas Iyer as Reserve Batsman

Irfan Pathan as Reserve All-Rounder

Bhuvneshwar Kumar (reserve pacer), Amit Mishra, Yuzvendra Chahal (reserve spinner) could also have been considered.

Eventually though, the selectors must have felt it worthy to pick a spin-bowling all-rounder, and therefore named Pawan Negi in the squad. The all-rounder – left-arm spinner and left-hand lower-order batsman – who plays for Delhi in the domestic circuit and has been part of the Delhi Daredevils and Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League, was named in the India squad that will take on Sri Lanka in three T20 Internationals in the next couple of weeks. However, considering he is yet to be presented his first India cap, for him to be drafted in the squad for a world event may be seen as a surprise.

For those who haven’t followed domestic cricket that closely, Negi has been in prolific form in recent times, especially in limited overs cricket; he has been among runs and wickets, and has forced his way into the Indian team on the sheer weight of impact performances.

This season, the 23-year old has scored impact runs batting lower down the order. Consider this: the Delhi lad batted on eight occasions in the recently concluded Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy competition and scored at a strike-rate of under 150 only once in those eight outings.