Having taken a series-sealing 3-0 lead against New Zealand with two games to play, India went into the fourth T20I at Vizag with the luxury of being able to experiment. With two T20Is left (and a couple of warm-up games) before T20 World Cup 2026, now is the time for the team management to try out anything new that they would want to.
One such selection came their way, albeit by chance. Ishan Kishan, who had been batting wonderfully in the last two games, was ruled out due to a niggle. Skipper Suryakumar Yadav didn't elaborate much about Kishan's injury and just limited the information to a 'niggle'. This meant that there was an opportunity for Shreyas Iyer to make his T20I comeback.
Unfortunately for Iyer, he wasn't picked but the selection snub is understandable too. He isn't part of India's T20 World Cup 2026 squad, at least not yet anyway and with Tilak Varma expected to be fit, it should stay that way. Therefore, it is important that think tank gives the other World Cup members some game time.
Axar Patel was the other option available in the squad but perhaps, head coach Gautam Gambhir and Suryakumar wanted to test the batting line-up a bit more. That's what prompted them to replace Kishan with a bowler in Arshdeep Singh. It meant that India went into the Vizag T20I with five genuine bowling options, apart from the all-rounders Hardik Pandya and Shivam Dube.
Of the five bowlers, Harshit Rana is the only one capable of batting although he is more of a slogger than a person with competent batting ability. The other four bowlers - Jasprit Bumrah, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep and Varun Chakaravarthy - are all barely dependable in a white-ball game.
But, that is where the challenge is. The series is sealed, the World Cup isn't far away, and if a team doesn't want to experiment in such a scenario, when will they?
