T20 World Cup semi-final: Will Yuzvendra Chahal replace Axar Patel in India’s playing XI against England?

IND vs ENG latest news: After India powered its way into the T20 World Cup 2022 semi-finals, Thursday’s clash against England brings up a fresh challenge and a team selection dilemma. While India topped their group and was the team with most Super 12 wins, there have been a few underwhelming performers in the strong line up.

India earned the final four spot on the back of starring performances by Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav and Arshdeep Singh, arguably the standout performers of the team. Opener KL Rahul has rediscovered form with two fifties while all-rounder Hardik Pandya has contributed with the bat and the ball as well. Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been at his miserly best while Mohammad Shami has also been a key wicket taker. 

Among the underwhelming performers are skipper Rohit Sharma, spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel and wicket keepers Dinesh Karthik and Rishabh Pant. While Pant could come in for Karthik yet again, in the spinning department, a key player in recent years who has remained out is Yuzvendra Chahal. 

Australian pitches at the T20 World Cup 2022 haven’t helped spinners much till now. Ashwin has had a mixed bag of a tournament, going for expensive, crucial runs in South Africa loss, but picking up 6 wickets including a tally of 3/22 versus Zimbabwe. 

On the other hand, Axar Patel hasn’t had an impressive tournament. He has been able to take only 3 wickets in 4 games played and has been expensive on some occasions. Axar was defended by India head coach Rahul Dravid who said that the left-arm spinner had “good games, as well” and it’s the nature of the format and the tournament that bowlers can at times be expensive. 

“The nature of this format is such that you can get taken apart, especially on a day like today when they lost a lot of wickets there, nothing to lose, they could go after it. And he’s bowled well, as well. I think he bowled well in a couple of games and took a few wickets in those games, as well, and I thought he bowled a very good over against Bangladesh just before the rain break. He bowled an over for six runs,” Dravid was quoted as saying in a presser.

Nevertheless, Dravid did not rule out Chahal coming into the line up as the tournament progressed to the final stage when India takes on England in Adelaide Oval on Thursday. He said that the team is open to changes and the final call will depend on the pitch.

“We’ll have to go there and see. I watched some of the games today and I know the tracks were slow and they gripped and they turned a bit. We might be playing on a completely new strip in Adelaide, and the strip we played with against Bangladesh, to be honest, did not spin. It was, again, a different kind of wicket, and it was played at Adelaide, as well,” Dravid said after the Zimbabwe match.

“I think I can’t sit here now just after a game and predict what’s going to happen there. We`ll have a couple of days. We`ll go and have a look at that wicket and see what we think it might do. Of course, if it’s slow we’ll play according to those situations. If we think it might play differently, then we`ll have to put up a squad to match that,” he added. 

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(With inputs from IANS)