Mohammed Shami is far from ready for Champions Trophy: Aakash Chopra
"Four fast bowlers should have 100 percent been there," said Chopra.
Mohammed Shami was back in the Indian team for the England T20I series after over 14 months of rehabilitation post recovering from Achilles heel injury. He played in the third match of the series but could not pick any wicket after bowling three overs and conceding 25 runs. He was rested for the fourth T20I and was brought back in the fifth T20I after India had won the series 3-1.
The right-arm pacer bowled 2.3 overs in the last T20I and picked three wickets, which included a scalp of only one recognised batter. He gave away 25 runs and looked on his way to normalcy. As Champions Trophy 2025 is just two weeks away, former India cricketer, Aakash Chopra has raised concerns over Shami’s mojo by saying that he is ‘far from ready’.
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"Good question, but the answer to that question also has a little bit of a trick. It's tricky as you will also have to drop someone. You can make a change to the squad but for that, you will have to drop someone. It's an ICC event. It's not a bilateral series at home. The squad will be of 15 members only," said Chopra on his YouTube channel.
"If you have to make a change, it's because of injury, and you have to make a request for that and it needs to be approved. Nothing like that has happened. Four fast bowlers should have 100 percent been there because whatever we have seen of Mohammed Shami, he did take three wickets in the last match for sure and bowled decently, but he is far from ready," he added.
India's squad for ICC Men's Champions Trophy 2025
Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill (vc), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah (Subject to fitness), Arshdeep Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rishabh Pant (wk) and Ravindra Jadeja.
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