Ashwin, Jadeja fail to make ODI squad for South Africa
MUMBAI: Senior spinners R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja continued to be ignored as the national selectors named a 17-member squad for the six-match ODI series in South Africa to be played from February 1-16.
Skipper Virat Kohli, rested for the ODI and T20I series against Sri Lanka, will lead the side named on Saturday. Mo ham med Shami, Kedar Jadhav and Shardul Thakur have been recalled. Jadhav suffered a hamstring injury before the limited-overs series against Sri Lanka.
Jadeja and Ashwin have not featured in the limited-overs team since June-July. And the rapid rise of wrist-spin duo Kuldeep Ya dav and Yuzvendra Chahal has made their comeback difficult. “After the Champions Trophy, we tried new boys Cha- hal and Kuldeep, and we’re also being consistent with Axar (Patel). They’ve done reasonably well and with every game they’ re improving a lot. We all felt since they’re doing well, they should be backed,” chief selector MSK Prasad told a press conference.
“When we picked them, we wanted to improve bench strength in spin. Today, we‘ve five-six quality spinners.”
He said: “There are enough domestic tournaments. They’ve played enough cricket. We tried these guys and they’re winning games for India. It makes sense to continue with them.”
Prasad said there was none to challenge MS Dhoni. “We’re grooming some keepers in the India A tours. More or less, we’ve fixed our mind till the (2019) World Cup. After that we’ll start grooming some of those keepers.
“Let me tell you frankly, the boys are still not up to the mark. We’ll keep giving them chance and see their maturity level. Dhoni still remains the No 1 keeper in the world. Day in, day out we’ve been saying that. Even in the current series, his stumping has been terrific. He’s phenomenal. There’s no comparison. I don’t see any other wicketkeeper in world cricket, let alone Indian cricket.”
Dhoni remains the No 1 wicketkeeper in the world. Day in, day out we’ve been saying that. MSK PRASAD, On MS Dhoni
ODI squad: V Kohli (c), R Sharma, S Dhawan, A Rahane, S Iyer, M Pandey, K Jadhav, D Karthik, M Dhoni (wk), A Patel, Y Chahal, K Yadav, J Bumrah, B Kumar, H Pandya, M Shami, S Thakur.