After days of keeping the name under wraps, the Indian Cricket Board has finally revealed Mohammad Shami as the injured Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement for the 20-20 World Cup.
Notably, the Indian premium pace bowler, Bumrah was ruled out of the upcoming World Cup due to a back stress fracture. The right-arm bowler had made a comeback to the team after missing the Asia Cup 2022 due to a back niggle as well.
He played two matches against Australia on his comeback but was ruled out again from the South Africa series bringing an unfortunate end to his World Cup hopes. Mohammad Shami who was called back into the T20I side after more than eight months, could not feature in India’s win over Australia as well. The 32-year-old was infected with COVID-19 and had to miss out on the Australia series as well as the following South Africa series.
Though it was expected that Shami would replace Bumrah in the World Cup squad, doubts started to emerge as days passed. The Indian Cricket Board has now rested all those doubts after announcing Shami as a like-for-like replacement for the injured JAsprit Bumrah.
Meanwhile, Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur have been named as backups for the pace bowlers and will join the rest of the team in Australia shortly. Shami announced his departure to Australia with an Instagram post.
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India begins their World Cup campaign with their first match against Pakistan on October 23rd at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
India squad for ICC T20 World Cup: Rohit Sharma (Captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami.
