Follow UsIndian captain Rohit Sharma defended the decision to have five spinners in the squad for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025. The Men in Blue have Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar and Varun Chakravarthy in the 16-member troupe that travelled to Dubai. But Dubai as a venue hasn’t been a great one for spinners.
“There are two spinners, the other three are all-rounders. I am not looking at them as five spinners. Those three guys can bat and can bowl also. The other teams have fast bowlers and all-rounders,” said Rohit ahead of India’s first game against Bangladesh in Dubai on February 20 (Thursday).
“They say that they have six fast bowlers, which is good. But we work on our strength and try to run the team on that. Those three guys - Jadeja, Axar, Washi - give us a different dimension to the game, to our combination, to our squad. And they add a lot to this team and give us a lot of depth. That is why we wanted to try and get the players who can have two skills rather than one skill.”
India are without their ace paceman Jasprit Bumrah, who was ruled out of the tournament due to a back injury. Rohit, however, isn’t too worried and feels there’s still enough quality in the team. “There will be times where you will miss certain players, but I think there is enough quality, enough depth, enough experience in the team for us to come here quite confident and be confident about what we want to do here. And then see how it goes."
“It's very easy for anyone or all of us to think far ahead and forget about what we need to do tomorrow. So, I think we'll just think about what we need to do tomorrow and then take it from there."
Talking about Chakravarthy, who has only played one ODI so far, Rohit said, “He throws the ball in the same way. Maybe he doesn't want to show us what he has. But that is a good thing. If he's got a certain weapon that he wants to just put it out there when it actually matters, I'm more than happy if he wants to do that."
“But he's got something different which is why he is here with us – whatever I have seen of him in the past 8-9 months, has been extremely impressive. So that is why we wanted to bring him here and see what he has. What can he do for Team India at this stage? So, let's see now what happens. It's a game. It's just about now executing that on the field.”
Toss is another thing that’s going to be an important factor in Dubai, with every team preferring to bat second due to the dew factor. “I'm not too sure about the dew. Dew is a very unknown factor to all of us. And it is very, very unpredictable because, like for us in India, we are so aware of certain conditions and certain venues. That also surprised us a little bit when we played in Nagpur the previous day before the game. There was so much dew, but during the game there was no dew. So, you can't really think too much about that and prepare based on that."
“I never go with a set plan of thinking about this, in this venue, this has worked for certain teams, so we should try and do that. Whatever works for us, we will try and do that, whether it is batting second or batting first. I have still not seen the pitch. We need to still see the pitch and talk to the groundsmen about the conditions of the ground and stuff like that."
“Whatever the recent games have been played here were all T20 format. I don't know if it's the right thing to look at that and make our judgment. I think it's important that whatever we feel is comfortable doing against certain opposition. Because all oppositions are different. Some oppositions like to bat first and put runs on the board. So, we would think about it, whether we want to make them bat first or not.”
Rohit Sharma (capt), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana, Mohd. Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Ravindra Jadeja, Varun Chakaravarthy
Non-traveling reserve: Mohammed Siraj, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shivam Dube