Aakash Chopra : “Indian team must start pushing for batters who can bowl”

Aakash Chopra, a former Indian cricketer, urged the team to prioritize batters with bowling skills and to give young players like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Tilak Varma a long rope and encouragement to bowl as frequently as possible. In the T20I format, he also urged spin-bowling all-rounder Washington Sundar to join India’s team.

“Considering that most of the current Indian batters don’t bowl even a couple of overs, Indian team must start pushing for batters who do. Yashasvi-Tilak should be given a longer rope…and encouraged to bowl as often as possible. Washington has to be in India’s T20 scheme of things too,” said Chopra in a tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Despite rolling their arms a little in their early years, Indian stars like Rohit Sharma (11 international wickets) and Virat Kohli (eight international wickets) have not bowled in years, depriving the team of the variety and options that they could have provided with their part-time bowling. As specialist batters, newer stars like Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, and Suryakumar Yadav have also competed. The Indian team of old, however, was different.

The lack of batters who can bowl has caused the team to be heavily dependent on their full-time bowlers like Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umran Malik, Umesh Yadav etc with all-rounders Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja and bowling all-rounders Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin being the only players providing the team with much-needed depth and options due to their capabilities and consistency with both bat and ball.