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Cricket News: Is IPL 2021 giving the Indian T20 World Cup Squad more concerns than answers? | IPL 2021: Some India players in the squad are out of form

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has naturally become the breeding ground for youngsters to find their way into the Indian team in the shortest format of international cricket.

It is justified too, considering that the league tests a newbie’s capabilities in T20 against the best playersin the world in extremely high-stake situations, which isn’t the case really with domestic T20s.

So naturally, once a player has been picked in the international team, a close eye would be kept on their outings in the IPL to make an estimation of their prospective performances for the Blues.

IPL a big focus in Indian T20 World Cup Squad

On those grounds, the second leg of the IPL is being widely looked as a preparation stage for the players who have made the cut for India’s World T20 squad later on.

India’s selection of the squad was quite peculiar, with the team arguably taking a bold approach by hunching on youngsters and spinners who have performed quite well in the last couple of years.

It also marked a comeback for Ravichandran Ashwin, who hasn’t seen much limited overs action since the fateful loss to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy in 2017.

However, fans crave for change more than anything else, and hence the performance of the entire Indian squad has been under immense scanner since the beginning of this leg of IPL 2021.

For starters, concerns have been raised over the form of the Mumbai Indians’ duo of Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan this season. To be fair, both of them were incredible last year and justified their selection in the series against England earlier this year. Back then, they had performed incredibly for players so new to the international stage and made a formidable statement that they were there to stay.

However, Ishan lost his place in the XI for a period and Suryakumar endured a poor season. It needs to be noted that Mumbai as a collective did not play at their optimum level yet either.

However, selections of youngsters are often met with both excitement and criticism. Such is the nature of the followers of Indian cricket over the years, largely driven by the cutting-edge competition for places that exists in the system owing to an abundance of top-class talent.

Moreover, the two of them edged out Shreyas Iyer to warrant a place in the squad. Iyer has delivered formidable performances for the Indian team in the last couple of years in multiple international assignments. He looked to have sealed the number four spot for the World T20, until the squad was announced.

Moreover, Iyer didn’t do anything wrong warranting his exclusion either. Just that his competitors in Ishan and Suryakumar looked comparatively better equipped to perform well in T20s. Naturally, there are high expectations off them and both have looked slightly off-colour in the IPL this year.

Similarly, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been a consistently brilliant bowler for the Indian team. He played excellently against England back in February too and looked to be in fine touch. Even he has blown hot and cold for Sunrisers Hyderabad though, whereas the likes of Avesh Khan, Mohammed Siraj, Deepak Chahar, Harshal Patel and others have made heads turn recently.

On the other hand, Yuzvendra Chahal seems to be scaling a nice comeback in recent games.

Chahal went through a rough patch for India in recent times, but the past some matches have raised hopes over his excellence and whether the team should have trusted him more as compared to the likes of Axar Patel and Rahul Chahar.

There are calls for replacements to be made straightaway, on the backing of recent form.

However, it can be argued that these statements are rather impulsive and short-sighted. The players who have been picked in the XI, barring Varun Chakravarthy, have all performed exceedingly well for the national team in the limited opportunities that they have received recently.

Moreover, they made it to this level following some seriously consistent performances in the chances that they received even in the IPL. It is also important to take into context that the likes of Suryakumar, Ishan, Hardik, Rahul Chahar…all of them were excellent in IPL 2020.

And the World T20 is slated to be played in the same venues. Though the calls for their selection were upped following their IPL performances, they made it to the T20 World Cup after fantastic performances in the Indian jersey.

To call for Hardik Pandya, a pillar for the Indian team in white-ball cricket, to be replaced by someone as new to the stage as Venkatesh Iyer is simply naïve. Yes, Indian cricket hasn’t made certain surprising decisions in the past. But a competition as big as the T20 World Cup needs to be looked at with much greater perspective than what is being done currently.

Overhauling the core of the squad just days prior to the commencement of a World Cup is simply unwarranted. These decisions have to be made prior to the squad announcement. There is no use of course correcting once a bullet has been fired.

All the players included in the squad are mighty fine in their own rights. They have performed well for both their IPL teams and the Indian side in the last year or so. One should not let the recency bias cloud the larger picture, especially so close to a tournament so important for the team due to multiple critical many factors.

Written by Tarkesh Jha. Follow Tarkesh on Twitter