Former Indian opener Aakash Chopra feels that young Indian opener Yashasvi Jaiswal is undroppable from the Indian T20I side as they prepare for the 2024 T20 World Cup and believes that he is way ahead of Shubman Gill in the pecking order to make it into the Indian squad following his brilliance in the shorter format of the game.
Yashasvi Jaiswal earned his international debut in 2023 on the West Indies tour, following a brilliant Indian Premier League (IPL) season. The youngster has guaranteed himself a berth in the T20I and Test squads, proving his worth at the highest level. The Left-handed opener struck 72 runs at an exceptional strike rate of 180.00 in two innings in the recently finished T20I series between India and Afghanistan.
In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra claimed that Yashasvi Jaiswal had beaten Shubman Gill to the opener’s position and asserted that Left-handed opener is likely to make it into the Indian side for the 2024 T20 World Cup to partner alongside Rohit Sharma.
“It’s clear that Yashasvi Jaiswal has run ahead of Shubman Gill. Yashasvi is ahead in the two-horse race, Gill is lagging slightly behind. Gill was played in the first match, dropped in the second, and hasn’t played in the third as well,”
“Yashasvi was made to open in all three (last two) games. He was sent in the Super Over as well. The way Yashasvi is batting, it seems like he is not going anywhere. Considering what Yashasvi did in Indore and has done previously as well, he has become almost undroppable,” Aakash Chopra said.
Jaiswal will win the race for the marquee event if he performs similarly in the first half of the IPL 2024 matches, while Gill will look to work hard just to get into India’s T20 World Cup side by impressing the selectors in the cash-rich league.
It Seems Like Virat Kohli Will Be At No.3 Position – Aakash Chopra
Aakash Chopra feels that the Indian team management has trusted him to play the Indian batting maestro in the NO.3 spot going into the 2024 T20 World Cup, adding that the absence of Hardik Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav had little impact on the team combination in the Afghanistan series.
“Before this series, Parthiv Patel said and I added more voice to that opinion, and I still believe the opening is the best place for Kohli in T20s. However, it seems like Kohli will be at No. 3 because the Indian team is not thinking (about getting him to open).
“They are also not thinking because Hardik Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav aren’t there at the moment. So they are not thinking about the number of left-handers and right-handers. We have Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh and Shivam Dube – three left-handers,” Aakash Chopra added.
The return of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma to the shortest format virtually guarantees their participation in the T20 World Cup in June. Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rinku Singh, and Tilak Varma are among the candidates to join the squad. Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya will join them after recovering from injuries.