With the Indian Premier League over, the focus has entirely shifted to international cricket with the Indian team slated to begin their first assignment in the second half of the T20 World Cup year with a home series against South Africa. India will play a five-game series starting June 9 in New Delhi. And with just a few days left before the kickoff, veteran cricketers have already thrown in their opinions in the likely playing XI for the series. While former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan did not name his XI, he strongly backed a 23-year-old star to play the entire series.
The BCCI announcement of the Indian squad for the South Africa series saw new new faces and Irfan backed the least talked about uncapped star Arshdeep Singh, who earned a place in the team following an impressive IPL 2022 campaign for Punjab Kings. In 14 games, Arshdeep picked 10 wickets and was very economical in the death overs.
Speaking to Star Sports, Irfan hailed Arshdeep’s death-bowling skill and backed the youngster to play all the five games in the impending series against the Proteas.
“If you see the IPL numbers in terms of the wickets, the matches are more and the wickets are less, still the selectors backed him and picked him in the squad. There is a reason for that, he keeps the best batters quiet, when he bowls at the death, he keeps Dhoni, Hardik Pandya quiet, bowls consistent yorkers against the set batters,” he said.
“You picked a left-arm bowler in your squad based on some thinking, because left is always right. So play him all the matches and he is a bowler who raises his hand for his team whenever there is a difficult situation, that he will bowl the yorkers and try to pick up wickets,” he added.
Among 27 bowlers who delivered at least 60 deliveries in the death overs during IPL 2022, Arshdeep (7.91) has the second-best ecobomy rate among pacers after Jasprit Bumrah (7.66). The left-armer has also delivered the joint-most yorkers (38) during the 15th IPL season, along with Bumrah.
“The good thing with Arshdeep Singh is that he knows his game, he knows what he has to do in those slog overs and that’s one of the reasons he has made it to the team because India are looking for death bowlers,” former India head coach Ravi Shastri, who was part of the same discussion, added.
