5 Team India Cricketers who Must Step Up at T20 World Cup

The T20 World Cup is inching closer and every national team coaches, despite players and assorted staffs spending time in isolation due to Coronavirus pandemic, must be beginning to finalise the team combination.

With the tournament as big as T20 World Cup, easily the second biggest trophy in World Cricket after ICC’s flagship 50-Over One Day International World Cup, the preparations start early. Every performance is checked, every aspect of a player’s game, how he handles the pressure and approaches relatively favourable scenarios, almost everything is closely monitored.

But there can be only so many spots on a team roster for the World Cup. As always, few players are almost guaranteed spots and they will be on the plane to Australia, no matter how they perform in games leading to that tournament. While few others, some good ones, will be sent into the ephemeral obscurity, lasting that tournament at least.

That’s why there will be pressure on the chosen ones, even King and captain Virat Kohli won’t be untouched, for more than billion hopes will be on his shoulders, and he will have to deliver. Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah are also two of Team India’s best and most important players.

But more pressure will be on players who will be given preferences, who can, or maybe supplanted by other players in some other ideal situations, or to be more clear, players who can be replaced but earned the precious tickets.

Here are those 5 players who will be on the plane to Australia, barring injuries or other unfathomable future situations, and so they will feel more heat to step up at T20 World Cup:

5. Yuzvendra Chahal

Having emerged as team India’s fulcrum in the spin department a few years ago,  Chahal‘s international form has been on the downhill for some time now, but he remains an important player and will be on the team roster for the T20 World Cup.
That said, following too many disappointing performances, time is maybe on the wrong side for the 29-year-old. What’s concerning for the former Indian chess player is that the batsmen are reading him easily these days, and his economy rate, well above the comfort zones, is a timely reminder for the Royal Challengers Bangalore off-spinner that he may have to come up with something new to touch the heights he touched a couple of seasons ago.

Yet to convince many in an Indian shirt. But there’s no denying that Shreyas Iyer is very talented, and remain a player with a sound technique who should flourish at the very top tier of world cricket. But talent alone can take you only so far, and Iyer knows, after getting into the good books of Indian Team selectors, he hasn’t done full justice to the faith shown in him by Kohli and Co. With a raft of players fighting for only a few spots in the Indian team, time may be running out for the 25-year-old Delhi Capitals captain.

3. KL Rahul

Shikhar Dhawan‘s injury at the 2019 ICC World Cup forced the team management to shoehorn him at the top of the order alongside Rohit Sharma, and he exceeded expectations. He scored some vital runs and was instrumental in Team India’s deep run in that tournament. But it was not out of the blues kind of output, for he is a natural opening Batsman.
But with Dhawan back to full fitness, that opening slot is closed, and so Rahul will have to contend with a place in the middle order, where there is a different sort of pressure. In a normal T20 situation, the middle-order Batsmen have to hit the ball right from the off, and to some extent, that’s not Rahul’s game.
And then there is Rishabh Pant factor. We know Rahul is keeping the gloves these days, but Pant is too good a talent to overlook and Rahul knows he is only a few mistakes away from forcing selectors to take a different call.

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