T20 World Cup 2024: Rinku Singh joins Indian team; no sight of Virat Kohli yet

Fresh off the IPL 2024 title win last Sunday, left-hand explosive batter Rinku Singh has touched down in the USA for the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 next month.

Most of the Indian players had flown over to New York on May 25th, there were only two players who didn't take the flight with the Indian team. One of them was Rinku Singh, who apparently was the only Indian player from India's T20 WC squad that marked his presence in the IPL final. The other one was 2024 IPL's highest-scoring batter Virat Kohli, who took a short break after the edition.

While Rinku Singh has marked his presence in the USA by uploading a picture of himself with Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav, Virat Kohli's status is still unknown. He is anyways going to miss India's only warm-up match for the T20 World Cup against Bangladesh on June 1 but it remains to be seen as to when the star Indian batter arrives in New York.

Selectors did a good job in not picking Rinku Singh

The entire Indian cricketing fraternity was taken aback when the Ajit Agarkar-led Men's selection committee kept Rinku Singh out of the main squad. Rinku is among the 4 players who will be there in the dugout as back-up players who can turn up for the Indian team in the tournament in case of some injury blow.

Rinku Singh's exclusion from the main 15-man squad caused a lot of havoc among fans on social media with many even asking BCCI to reverse their decision. But it was never going to happen, was it? People should understand that if the selection committee have excluded any player regardless of what they have done in the past, then there has to be a reason for it.

The selectors could not have blindly picked Rinku Singh for the World T20 stage based on the 5 sixes he had smashed against an inexperienced Yash Dayal. Not to take any glory away from Rinku but the left-hander couldn't have done it if the track was somewhere in Australia or South Africa.

It was a flat batting track in Ahmedabad and Rinku Singh was just able to manage those 5 sixes in a row. ICC World Cups are a different ball game. Someone like Rishabh Pant, who is a modern-day hero for that Gabba Test, wasn't integrated into a World Cup side due to promise. And the same couldn't have happened to Rinku.

The selectors' decision was justified later on after Rinku Singh returned with just 168 runs from 11 innings at a strike rate of 148.67 but he did bag the title. Many would argue that the batter didn't get as many chances to bat this season but the fact is, he didn't deserve a place in the T20 World Cup squad.

India's T20 World Cup schedule