Following Rishabh Pant’s heroics against England earlier in July and Dinesh Karthik’s impressive performance since the IPL, Australian great Ricky Ponting has voiced his support for the duo, saying India should include both in the forthcoming T20 World Cup.

The former Australian captain has said that he would like the duo to be picked over Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan.

“We have seen what Rishabh is capable of in 50-over cricket and I know absolutely what he is capable of in the T20 game,” Ponting said. 

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“Dinesh Karthik has had his best IPL ever just very recently and I would be trying to find every way to have both of those guys in my team,” he added. 

The 47-year-old also feels that if Rishabh Pant is batting in between third and fifth down while Dinesh Karthik and Hardik Pandya are finishing for the team, the batting line-up becomes increasingly threatening.

“Rishabh to bat, in that three-four-five range, and have Dinesh and maybe Hardik Pandya…if you have those guys finishing for you, well that batting line-up looks very, very dangerous,” he said.

The former ICC World Cup winner understands that it will force other players such as Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer to go out, however, argued that picking a team from such a huge talent pool that India has, is always tough.

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“Obviously that means someone like Kishan or Surya or Iyer, someone like that, might miss out and I don’t think Surya will miss out given his current form,” he said. 

“When you got so much talent, picking an Indian team is always going to be difficult and Pant and Karthik would be the two, I would pick ahead of Kishan right now,” he finished.

Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer are both part of the Indian team that is scheduled to play three ODI and five T20 matches against West Indies.