India Squad for T20 World Cup: Ashwin makes a stunning return after 4 years; Chahal, Kuldeep era ends

Mumbai, September 8: Ravichandran Ashwin is included in India squad for the T20 World Cup 2021. It is not a troll or false news alert. But a stunning piece of reversal of fortune that veteran off-spinner experienced on Wednesday night (September 8) when the national selectors announced the 15-member squad for the mega event to be held in the UAE in October-November.

Ashwin had last played a T20I for India was way back in 2017 against the West Indies. Since then, the Tamil Nadu man had fallen off the pecking order, primarily because of the rise of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, popularly dubbed as KulCha.

The Indian think-tank under Virat Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri took a fancy for the leg-spin duo in the white ball formats post the ICC Champions Trophy 2017, and it was not a futile move too as they delivered good results for India in ODIs and T20Is.

But in the last couple of years the stock of KulCha has fallen down badly as they struggled to take wickets or contain the run flow as they did in those heady 2017-2019 period. In fact, Kuldeep, though he had a decent outing recently against Sri Lanka, has been struggling to keep his place in the 11 even for Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL.

Even then, many would not have seen the return of Ashwin to the T20I fold. There have been several young names in the horizon like Rahul Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy and Axar Patel.

Each one of them found a place in India's 15 for the T20 World Cup but the selectors also might have wanted some form of experience in the spin department and Ashwin might have fitted that bill.

There were lot of talks about the fallout between Ashwin and captain Virat Kohli on the basis of the spinner's non-selection in India's playing 11 for the England Test series. But the selection of Ashwin to the T20I squad might have pushed such rumours to their untimely demise too.

But what a comeback for Ashwin!