T20 World Cup 2024: Sunil Gavaskar picks his India XI to face Ireland

Ahead of Indian cricket team’s opening match in the T20 World Cup, former batter Sunil Gavaskar picked his playing XI to face Ireland on Wednesday. The legendary former India player picked his choices, in order, for the match to be played at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York.

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India are bracing to play their first international match since the T20I series win against Afghanistan in January.

Rather than going for a traditional left-right combination at the top, Gavaskar named Virat Kohli as Rohit’s opening partner. “The way Kohli has batted, particularly the second half of the IPL, he deserves to open the batting with Rohit Sharma, the captain. Seriously, good players are good players. They can bat anywhere, you know whether they’re right and left hand,” said Gavaskar on Star Sports.

Gavaskar named Yashasvi Jaiswal at No. 3. The left-hander has never batted outside the opening slot for India or in IPL for Rajasthan Royals. Although, he does have the experience of batting in that position for Mumbai in 2021 and 2022 editions of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He scored 303 runs in 13 such innings at a strike rate of 132.31 with just one fifty.

The other major point of note in Gavaskar’s line-up was the absence of Arshdeep Singh despite his impressive show in the warm-up game against Bangladesh. Instead, the veteran preferred Mohammed Siraj as Jasprit Bumrah’s pace partner.

Gavaskar also assigned a No. 8 role for Shivam Dube, where he has never batted for India in T20Is. In the Afghanistan series in January, Dube was sent at No. 5 and 6.

Sunil Gavaskar’s India XI for T20 World Cup match vs Ireland: Rohit Sharma (c), Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh.