Gautam Gambhir Springs Big Surprise In His India’s World Cup Squad

With the much-awaited ICC World Cup 2019 less than 90 days away, the cricketing world is busy speculating who will make it to the mega-not and who will not. The players, on the other hand, are also desperately trying to put in consistent performances to impress the selectors and get a ticket to the World Cup. Well, all the ten participating teams will announce their squad in the coming days. But before the teams sit down to finalise their respective squads, the cricketing world has already started predicting the squad. The latest to join the bandwagon is former India opener Gautam Gambhir.

The World Cup-winning star revealed his pick for India’s World Cup 2019 squad and the 15-member squad was filled with surprises. He picked veteran off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin as his third spinner along with Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal. Ashwin has completely fallen down in the pecking order and has not played an ODI since the tour of Caribbeans in mid-2017.

Gambhir told Star Sports during his analysis that Ashwin will be a good pick for the Indian cricket team considering his experience. The legendary batsman also felt that Ashwin can be of great help to his younger teammates.

Gambhir also left out highly-rated Rishabh Pant. The selectors recently recalled Pant for the ongoing ODI series against Australia, making it more or less clear that the youngster is in scheme of things for the World Cup. Pant has been tipped to be India’s backup wicketkeeper during the showpiece event. But Gambhir went with just specialist in the form of MS Dhoni and said that KL Rahul can be the second choice.

Meanwhile, hosts England will take on South Africa in the tournament-opener on May 30, 2019, at The Oval in London. India will start their campaign against the Proteas on June 5.  The format for the 2019 edition will see 10 best teams in the world going head-to-head in a round-robin format. The tournament will culminate with the final at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground on July 14.

Gautam Gambhir’s predicted squad:

Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni, Kedar Jadhav, Hardik Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Shikhar Dhawan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Vijay Shankar