Is it fair to ditch Shikhar Dhawan? Decoding reason behind Gabbar's exclusion from India's T20 squad

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Approach, intent and mindset these are the words we often hear from India captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid. The team mangement has a plan and whoever fits in it will be selected in the squad and whoever does not will be ditched. No matter how consistent you are, no matter if you had a great or poor IPL season, If you can follow the templet you are in if you can't see you later. But what exactly is this templet? To be honest no one really knows. Even the captain and the head coach are often seen saying two different things. Nevertheless, the India squad for the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 was announced on Monday. There were no big surprises as the team selected for the Asia Cup 2022 was retained except few veteran players making comeback.

BUT! Yes, there is a but, how many of these are stubborn choices? Cricket experts around the world are talking about Mohammed Shami, who has not played a single T20I for India since the 2021 T20 World Cup. However, no one is really talking about Shikhar Dhawan. The team mangement is desperate to have a left-hand batsman batting in the middle order but they are not ready to give chance to someone who has experience.

Dhawan is regarded as a man of big tournaments. His fighting century against Australia in the ICC World Cup 2019 is one of the best knocks played by any Indian batsman in the World Cup. His stats in the ICC tournaments are something that only Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have achieved but still, he is not in the squad.

Shikhar Dhawan in ICC events

ODI WC: 10 matches, 537 runs, 53 average, 3 centuries, 1 fifty

Champions Trophy: 10 matches, 701 runs, 77 average, 3 centuries, 3 fifties

T20 WC: 7 matches, 74 runs, 10 average

Perform in IPL and get selected in Team India? Not for Shikhar Dhawan

Would you belive it, if I tell you that Shikhar Dhawan has scored more than 400 runs in every IPL season since 2016? And he is averaging above 30 in all the last eight seasons. He scored 460 and 587 runs in the last two seasons with a decent strike rate of 123. 

Shikhar Dhawan in IPL 2022

Matches - 14

Runs - 460

Average - 38

Strike Rate - 122

100s - 0

50s - 3

These numbers are so good that Dhawan would have walked into any international T20 side but not in India. The BCCI has restricted Shikhar to the ODI format and has made up its mind that Dhawan can only play one format which is ODI cricket.