The preparations of the Indian team are going on in full swing in Australia ahead of the all-important T20I World Cup 2022. India faced a prominent domestic Australian team namely Western Australia in a couple of unofficial warm-up games in the last week in Perth. The caravan will now move to Brisbane for official practice matches.
Rohit Sharma-led team will be facing Australia and New Zealand on October 17 and 19 respectively in their official practice games, with both games scheduled to occur at The Gabba cricket stadium in Brisbane. The warm-up games against two top international sides will be India’s last assignment heading into the high-octane ICC tournament.
Wisden excludes MS Dhoni from their all-time India T20I XI:
In the meantime, a renowned English Cricket magazine named ‘Wisden’ published its all-time India T20I XI. The list included some elite Indian cricketers including Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravichandran Ashwin, and multiple others. Former Indian opening batter Virender Sehwag was named as the 12th man of the team.
MS Dhoni’s absence in the star-studded 11-member unit managed to surprise the fans. Dinesh Karthik, who recently made his comeback in the national side following an impressive outing in the Indian Premier League was surprisingly given a preference over the Ranchi-born cricketer.
MS Dhoni featured for the national side in as many as 98 T20 internationals. He had 1617 runs and an impressive average of 37.77 to his name in those games. On the other hand, Dinesh Karthik has played 51 matches for India, having managed to score 657 runs. Karthik has a remarkable strike rate of 145 which possibly gave him an edge over Dhoni.
Here’s the all-time T20I XI picked by Wisden:
Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Yuvraj Singh, Hardik Pandya, Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthik (wicketkeeper), R Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Ashish Nehra.
Here’s how the fans reacted to the Wisden India All-time XI:
Surya ki jagah msd hone chahiye jb all time ki baat ho surya khela hi kitna hai msd captain hone chahiye
— Abhijeet🇮🇳 (@Abhijee58740170) October 12, 2022
Let be honest MS Dhoni's stats in T20Is are not that great ..
— Pronay Halder (@PronayH73021926) October 12, 2022
Dhoni has poor record in t20is
— Maulik (@Maulik65024856) October 12, 2022
Team without universal captain 😆😆 @WisdenIndia pic.twitter.com/Fe9flnuS7s
— Captain levi (@captain73837) October 12, 2022
Sehwag only played 19 t20i, so its understandable, but dhoni 🙃, i wanted him at 7 cause he has finished more in run chases than DK , even though i also want dk , u gotta remember dhoni slow strike 127 is cause of many innings he played at 4, 5, it was same with dk until recently
— MN KEERTHAN (@mnkeeru18) October 13, 2022
