Gill, Siraj set to be missout on Aisa cup squad

Introduction

The Indian selectors will gather in Mumbai next Tuesday (August 19) to select the team to the Asia Cup and their decisions could well be gutsy and not in line with what has been the expected trends. England tour standouts such as star batter Shubman Gill, gallant spearhead Mohammed Siraj may not even find their way in.

Gill smashed more than 750 runs – a second highest aggregate in a series by any other person other than the prolific Sunil Gavaskar. The very apparent reason, however, is that such runs were recorded during half a week matches and Asia Cup is a shorter T20I tournament. He, too, scored a mind boggling 650 runs in the IPL, but those were as an opener and the selectors could be expected to keep on with the present combo of Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson. Read More Here

Then there is always the option of the third opener, and keeping the name of Gill on the table is a stinging surety, but Yashasvi Jaiswal has quite fair chances of becoming the third opener. They will pick one of them to play in the September 9-28 championship and Jaiswal seems to have the advantage. Neither might be chosen and at this stage Gill might be lagging in the race but then Gautam Gambhir may present a solid case to lead the Test team.

Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav, and Rinku Singh are the likely candidates of the rest of the batters in the squad and one more batting spot remains to be filled. The aspirants are Shivam Dube and Washington Sundar but Shreyas Iyer, who played a leading role in IPL finalist Punjab Kings, might not be as lucky. Jitesh Sharma should take the second place behind the stumps.

Siraj, who has made his name, the highest wicket-taker in the Anderson-Tendulkar series with some spirited show and who is now the toast of the country may find no place because he will be priced too high with Jasprit Bumrah, who is nothing short of the best bowler in the world, being entrusted with the responsibility of leading the attack. There are probable spots to include Arshdeep Singh and one (or both) of Prasidh Krishna and Harshit Rana. The other pacer in the squad will be Hardik Pandya bowling the last over crucial over during the T20 World Cup. This may not be the case of veteran seamer Mohammed Shami who played the XI in the last T20I India played (against England).