Team India’s selection policy has come under massive questioning after the Men in Blue failed to defend their Asia Cup crown in 2022. The Men in Blue were knocked out of the ongoing edition taking place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the group stage.
While the team clearly underperformed during the tournament, it is many decisions taken by the team management which have surprised many. Head coach Rahul Dravid and skipper Rohit Sharma have continued to experiment with the T20 World Cup in mind and constantly tinkered with India’s playing XI. These decisions have clearly backfired on Team India and led to criticism from the cricket fraternity. Ex-Indian skipper Dilip Vengsarkar has become the latest to question the thinking and explained that an important tournament like Asia Cup should be played to win.
“The team is going ahead with their experiments. They picked Dinesh Karthik, but they haven’t played him, and then they played Ravichandran Ashwin for the first time yesterday (Tuesday) against Sri Lanka. Obviously, the team management wants to give all the players a chance as they are trying to find their best XI for next month’s World Cup. But then this event is also very important. The Asia Cup is a very big tournament,” Vensarkar told Khaleej Times.
“Winning matches in a tournament like this is very important for the morale of the team. Also, I think it’s important to have the winning combination. As I said, the Asia Cup is a very big event. You can experiment maybe in a bilateral series, but the Asia Cup and the World Cup, these are major tournaments. In these tournaments, you need to win, that’s very important,” he added.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka will play the final of the 2022 Asia Cup. India’s attention will turn towards the T20 World Cup where the Men in Blue start their campaign on October 23 against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Before that, the Men in Blue are scheduled to host Australia and South Africa for bilateral series.
