5 players who deserved a place in India's T20I squad for West Indies tour

3. Ruturaj Gaikwad

Be it for Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League or while playing for Maharashtra in the domestic circuit, Ruturaj Gaikwad has been phenomenal in the last couple of years. He was in India’s scheme of things in the shortest format and thus, him not getting selected after scoring 590 runs in 16 matches in the recently concluded IPL makes very little sense.

It is true that the selectors had a very difficult choice on their hands as there was a place for either Gaikwad or Yashasvi Jaiswal and they went with the latter as he had a tremendous season in the IPL. However, what more can Gaikwad do?

The cricketer has barely got enough opportunity to represent the national team and in those opportunities, the Pune-born cricketer failed to impress and that’s probably one of the reasons behind him getting dropped.

However, there’s enough talent in him that can prove to be extremely valuable in the future. On the other hand, Gaikwad can prove to be another Sanju Samson who was deemed to be the next big superstar but has been presented with very limited opportunities so far. Sanju can still make it big and so can Gaikwad but with India’s top order looking sorted at the moment, how can Gaikwad crack the code?