I really like Pant. I believe that if he is develops properly, he can be India’s version of AbD himself, a number four who can find boundaries easily in the middle overs all over the park. However, it makes no sense to send him ahead of Iyer in an ODI right now because Pant is nowhere near mature enough right now to ‘build’ an innings consistently where as Iyer is someone who can score quickly via boundaries and has also got the ability to rotate strike well. It baffles me that the Indian side has continuously misused Iyer, any other international team would love to have a player in his mould.
@Aalay is right, there is no one in domestic cricket who can play the role of a number five well right now and Pant is our best option for it. Shankar is the only other option I can see playing there and I’m not sure if he will walk back into the side easily.
Enough of Jadhav too, he isn’t the type of player you would want at six and I hope he is playing only because both Hardik and Shankar aren’t in the squad.
On the topic of openers, I know that Rahul is the current backup, but would like to see Gill get a few games eventually. While many have compared him to Kohli, I feel he is much better utilised as an opener like Sachin who can get positive starts in the powerplay, something that Rahul has failed to do so far in his ODI career. Gill also strikes me as the type of extremely talented young player that needs to be quickly integrated into the side like Kohli and Sachin himself. It will be a shame if he is left to grind in domestic cricket for years before getting his chance due to the current incumbents being good, as I can see Gill easily surpassing our current opening duo in a few years if backed properly.[DOUBLEPOST=1565537575][/DOUBLEPOST]
Ashwin's behaviour today is being criticised a lot. What has he done now?
His TNPL stunt perhaps? Definitely deserves to be criticised for that.