Deepak Chahar or Bhuvaneshwar Kumar – Ian Bishop & Sanjay Manjrekar Picks Deserving Choice For the T20 World Cup
Deepak Chahar has been named as a standby player alongside Shreyas Iyer and Shardul Thakur.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India, on September 8, announced the T20 World Cup squad and the absence of Deepak Chahar from the squad came out as the biggest surprise for the cricket fraternity.
The selectors, in fact, went on with three pacers only, namely Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, with Bhuvi being the only swing bowler. Notably, Deepak Chahar is on the reserve list along with Shreyas Iyer and Shardul Thakur.
Meanwhile, the cricketer-turned-commentators Sanjay Manjrekar and Ian Bishop believe that Deepak Chahar deserves to be in the main squad of the team.
In a conversation with ESPNcricinfo, both the former cricketers were asked who deserved the spot in the T20 World Cup between Bhuvneshwar and Chahar. And interestingly, both of them gave a nod to Deepak Chahar.
While Manjrekar believes that Bhuvaneshwar Kumar is not in his ‘prime form’ currently, Bishop emphasized that Bhuvi has been included in the squad, merely on the back of experience.
“Bhuvneshwar Kumar is not at the prime of his abilities and form and skills, whereas Deepak Chahar is the best that we’ve seen him for a while. So when you make a current comparison between the two, I am in no doubt that currently Chahar is a greater value in a T20 team than Bhuvneshwar. But I completely understand why he (Bhuvi) is in the squad. But just based on pure clinical assessment of the two at this stage, Chahar is slightly ahead,” explained Manjrekar.
Bishop, at the same time also feels that Deepak Chahar is unlucky to be left out as he is currently the best swing bowler in the shortest format of the game.
“I thought that Deepak was unlucky to be left out as well, if they were gonna take an extra seamer, I understand why India would have gone with Bhuvi’s history, in terms of his expertise over a long time, but right now I would agree with Sanjay Manjrekar that Deepak has better form and he swings the new ball more than any other bowler in this format of the game in the powerplay,” said Bishop.
The West Indian also pointed out that Bhuvi was given preference due to his ability to bowl in death overs but considering the IPL 2021 form, Deepak Chahar would be his first pick.
“One of the differences could be that, although Deepak is bowling a little bit more at death, his expertise at the death, bowling in different phases when he is at his best, is excellent. I thought I saw a little bit of it coming back in the last game, to be honest, a little bit more form coming back, but if you are talking about the course of the IPL, Deepak Chahar is in better bowling form,” added Bishop.