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Team India head coach Rahul Dravid opened up on keeping spinner Kuldeep Yadav out of playing eleven and said that it is tough to leave anyone out on the bench.
Kuldeep made his T20I debut in 2017 and after that, he appeared in 35 20-over matches where he picked up 59 wickets at an economy rate of 6.75. However, the star India spinner failed to make it into the playing eleven in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024. India will take on Afghanistan in their upcoming Super Eights match of the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 at the Kensington Oval in Barbados on Thursday. Speaking at the pre-match press conference, Dravid said that all four players who were on the bench were quality performers. The head coach pointed out that they selected the playing eleven based on the conditions. "It's tough to leave anyone out. All the four guys that we left out in those games, to be honest, are all quality players, quality performers. Any one of them actually coming into your squad, if you were to look at it, man for man will not make your squad a weaker squad. It's just that the conditions and what we felt was the requirement in that particular venue made us go with that particular combination where we felt that there wasn't a huge role for spin and it was more a pace bowlers kind of conditions," Dravid said. Dravid showered praise on the Afghan bowling attack and said that they are experienced bowlers. "It is important for us to recognise that they have a good bowling attack all round. Even their two pacers are quite experienced, whether it's Farooqi and Naveen Ul Haq have both played a lot of cricket, they both swing the ball as well. So, they've got a pretty good bowling attack, there's no doubt about it. I think their bowlers are some of the most sought-after bowlers in this format across the world in different leagues," he added. India will be aiming to do well against Afghanistan (June 20), Bangladesh (June 22) and Australia (24) and register big wins to qualify for the semifinals and end India's drought for an ICC trophy since 2013's Champions Trophy and also win their first T20 WC since 2007's inaugural edition in South Africa. The Men in Blue displayed a stupendous performance in the group stage of the marquee event and finished at the top of the Group A table with seven points. Squad: Rohit Sharma (C), Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj. (ANI)
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