WC: Shami, Siraj & Shardul to join Indian squad

The trio of pacers Mohammed Shami, Mohammad Siraj and Shardul Thakur are flying out on Thursday to join India’s squad in Australia for the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup 2022.As per ESPNCricinfo, it is not still certain as to which one of these players will join the main squad. None of the reserve players- Shreyas Iyer, Ravi Bishnoi and Deepak Chahar are travelling currently.A back injury had sidelined Chahar from the recently-concluded ODI series against South Africa.The main squad for the global cricketing event left for Australia on October 6 and are currently in Perth, where the player have had a one-week training camp to up their skills and also a practice match against Western Australia. Men in Blue’s next practice game is scheduled for October 13.Jasprit Bumrah suffering a stress reaction during the T20I leg of the series against South Africa was a massive blow to Team India ahead of the T20 WC. At that point of time, Shami and Chahar were in contention to be his replacement, but the latter picking up an injury made Shami the most likely replacement for the Indian pace spearhead.The final decision will be taken after Shami’s fitness is assessed. Shami has not played T20I cricket since the previous edition of ICC T20 World Cup in November last year. After recovering from COVID-19, he has been training at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru. This bout of virus had kept him out of white-ball series against Australia and South Africa at home. He last featured in a competitive cricket match during India’s tour of England back in July.After the practice game in Perth on Thursday, India will travel to Brisbane where they will play two official ICC T20 WC warm-up matches against Australia and New Zealand on October 17 and October 19.Following this, the squad will move to Melbourne to start off their tournament campaign in a blockbuster clash against Pakistan on October 23. India is a part of Group 2 in the tournament, which also has Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa and two qualifiers who will advance after the first round.India’s T20 World Cup squad: Rohit Sharma (capt), KL Rahul (vice-capt), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wk), Dinesh Karthik (wk), Hardik Pandya, R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh.