IPL form barely considered for India T20 World Cup squad, skipper Sharma says

Release time：2024-06-03 23:42:48 Source：Cultural Crossings news portal

MUMBAI, India (AP) — Captain Rohit Sharma says current Indian Premier League form was hardly a factor when it came to picking India’s squad for the T20 World Cup.

Sharma said on Thursday they could have picked the 15-man squad before the IPL. They waited until this week and chose nine of the team that reached the 2022 semifinals.

The T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the United States starts on June 1 and India doesn’t get going until June 5 against Canada on Long Island.

“We nearly made our squad combination before the IPL began (in March),” Sharma said on Thursday in a news conference. “There is nobody new coming into the squad, and a lot of our players have been playing T20s before the IPL. We just had to fill in some gaps and that’s where the IPL has helped us. We knew our core group and only made a few additions.”

That core group included Sharma and Virat Kohli, around whom there was external debate about whether they should be picked. After their T20 World Cup exit in November 2022, the batting stars didn’t play another Twenty20 for India until this past January, when Afghanistan visited. Sharma played three games and Kohli two.

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