BCCI on Wednesday announced the members of team India for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2021 in October. The team is by Virat Kohli and includes some fresh faces who will participate in the quadrennial event which will get underway on October 23 in Abu Dhabi.

Reports stated that the BCCI’s selection committee led by Chetan Sharma met at the headquarters in Mumbai and connected with skipper Kohli in Manchester and coach Ravi Shastri in London over finalizing names for the T20 extravaganza.

BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah (convenor of the selection committee) were also part of the most important selection by the committee.

Also read: Ravichandran Ashwin included in 2021 India T20 World Cup squad

It can be seen that KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma are the two first-choice openers when it comes to the shortest format, and another option is to have Virat opening alongside Rohit, if the management wants to play Suryakumar Yadav at number three.

However, another opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan missed out his place. Meanwhile, Shreyas Iyer’s name has been included as a standby player.

Coming to the spin-department, the selectors made some tough calls by excluding Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav while veteran Ravichandran Ashwin returned to the squad.

Also read: MS Dhoni to mentor India T20 World Cup squad

Meanwhile, Indian cricket commentator and journalist Harsha Bhogle posted a tweet and said, “Biggest news is that Ashwin is recalled to the #T20WorldCup team. No other spinner turns the ball away from left handers. No Chahal means a big vote of confidence in Rahul Chahar. Bit hard on Shreyas Iyer.”

Several other social media users expressed their displeasure over the exclusion of Shikhar Dhawan and Yuzvendra Chahal. Here are some tweets.

Along with the original squad, the selectors will also pick travelling reserves who will go to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) alongside the 15-member squad as per COVID-19 protocols.

India will open its T20 World Cup campaign against Pakistan on October 24 in Dubai.

India Squad: Virat Kohli (Capt), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Rahul Chahar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohd Shami.

Standby players:  Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar.