5 Team India T20 World Cup stars from 2016 who will not play in 2021

2. Ajinkya Rahane

Like Ashwin, even Ajinkya Rahane has been shoe-horned as a Test match specialist and hasn’t played in the shorter versions of the game since 2018. His performances in the IPL haven’t been as good as they used to be and with the emergence of others like KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal, his chances have taken a hit.

He last played a T20I for India in 2016. The Delhi Capitals batsman doesn’t have a guaranteed place in the starting XI for his current team, which is obviously not going to do him much favour. In 20 T20Is, he has scored just 375 runs at an average of 20.83 at a strike rate of 113.29. His only 50+ score came in his debut game against England.

Rahane played one game in the 2016 T20 World Cup, and it was the semi-final when he was brought in for Shikhar Dhawan, who struggled for form. He scored 40 in 35 deliveries, which proved to be a bit too slow at the end of the day. For the Mumbaikar to have any chance of getting back into the T20I setup, he will have to do something quite special and also improve his strike-rate, an area of his game that has often been criticized.