With only less than 15 days before the start of the Asia Cup 2023 event, BCCI announced India’s squad on August 21.
Rohit’s Opens on India’s Batting line-up in Asia Cup
The Asia Cup 2023 is set to begin on August 30, when Pakistan and Nepal will be clashing on the inaugural match at Multan. India will have its first match with arch-rivals Pakistan on September 2, at Pallekele International Stadium.
The jointly hosted tournament by Pakistan and Sri Lanka will feature a total of 13 matches out of which four will be played in Pakistan and the remaining 9 matches will be played in Sri Lanka.
With the Indian squad announcement, many questions were faced by Rohit Sharm on the batting line-up and the combinations between the batters. There is also a question of how the batting line will be in the first match against Pakistan.
But Rohit Sharma was completely calm and came out with hilarious answers. He said most of the batting line-up is decided to expect for spots No.4 and 5. He continued that young batters will be shuffled in positions and also gave a hilarious comment that the team will not involve in madness like sending an opener to bat at N0.8.
“The openers will bat at their positions, same with the number 3, the spot is fixed (for Virat Kohli), KL Rahul played at number 5 before the injury he will do the same in Asia Cup, Hardik Pandya will bat at number 6 while number 7 is for Ravindra Jadeja.”
“Players can shuffle a bit at numbers 4 and 5, there is no problem in that aspect, it’s important to have that flexibility in the squad,” Rohit said at the press conference.
“When we came to the ODI team there was no fixed batting position for the youngsters. Look at my batting positions when I started, I batted from top to bottom. Every youngster batted from top to bottom at the start of their career.”
“It’s not that we will send the opener to number 8 or vice versa. We don’t do such madness (yeh pagalpanti nahi karte hum). A little bit of shuffling is important for the team,” he concluded.
The Indian squad will assemble at National Cricket Academy NCA in Banglore on a six days camp which starts on August 24.
India’s Squad for Asia Cup 2023
Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya (VC), Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Prasidh Krishna, Sanju Samson (backup).
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