Sourav Ganguly perplexed with Shubman Gill, Ajinkya Rahane’s omission from ODI squad against Windies

Days after chief selector MSK Prasad announced the three Indian squads for the upcoming tour of the West Indies, former India captain Sourav Ganguly has expressed his reservations over the limited-overs squads. The 47-year-old said he was surprised to not to see the names of Shubman Gill and Ajinkya Rahane in the squads for the ODI series in the Caribbeans. India made a number of changes to their squads and brought back players like Manish Pandey and Shreyas Iyer but Shubman and Rahane missed out.

The omission of Shubman’s name has particularly upset the experts and fans. The talented 19-year-old batsman hit three consecutive fifties for India A against the West Indies A in a just-concluded ODI series that the visitors won 4-1 but yet he was not picked for the senior team. Shubman was in fact adjudged the Man of the Series for scoring 218 runs in four games.

Taking to Twitter, Ganguly said he was surprised to see Shubman and Rahane missing in the ODI squad. India’s middle-order came under the scanner after their shock exit from the recently concluded cricket World Cup in which they had a shortage of sound batsman or two to guide the middle overs. Injuries to Shikhar Dhawan and Vijay Shankar made things so worse that India had to stack their batting line-up with wicket-keeper-batsmen like Rishabh Pant and Dinesh Karthik.

‘Time to play same cricketers in different formats’

Ganguly also said in another tweet that the time has come for selectors to pick the same players for different formats as that will boost their confidence and rhythm. He said at the moment, too few players for India were playing in all the three formats and reminded that great teams have consistent players.

Former BCCI secretary Sanjay Jagdale also said recently that Rahane should be India’s No.4 batsman in the ODIs and rued that the latter was not there for the World Cup in England where he has scored runs.

Shubman made his international debut against New Zealand earlier this year though he could manage only 16 runs in two games. Rahane, on the other hand, last played for India during the ODI series in South Africa early last year.