Team India must push for batters who can bowl: Aakash Chopra | Cricket News

NEW DELHI: Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra urged the national team to seek out hitters who can also bowl and to give young players like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Tilak Varma a long rope and encouragement to bowl as frequently as feasible.

He also urged Washington Sundar, an all-rounder who bowls spin, to be included India’s T20I 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,” posted Chopra on X.

Despite rolling their arms a little in their early years, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have not bowled in years, depriving the squad of the diversity and alternatives that they could have provided with their occasional bowling. Rising players like Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, and Suryakumar Yadav have also played as specialist batters.
This was not the case, though, with the earlier iteration of the Indian team, which featured batting greats like Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, and Suresh Raina, all of whom were also very skilled with the ball and could take important wickets when their team needed them.
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.
Tilak (14 wickets in first-class, List A and T20 cricket) and Yashasvi (seven wickets across all formats at the domestic level) were given the ball during the final T20I against West Indies, which India lost. India lost the series 2-3. During the series, India’s batting depth was a key issue.
Notably, ahead of the fourth T20I against the Windies, Indian bowling coach Paras Mhambrey had said that the team is working with Yashasvi and Tilak on their bowling.
“When you have someone who can chip in, it is nice. I have seen Tilak and Yashasvi bowl since U19 days. They are capable of being good bowlers. They can work on it at this level. When you got options like these, it is nice to have them. We will see them bowl soon hopefully, we are working on it. It will take time. Soon, we will see them bowling an over at least,” said Paras in a pre-match press conference.
Sundar has played 123 T20s and scored 1,147 runs at an average of 19.44 and a strike rate of over 120, with three fifties in 80 innings. He also has 93 wickets in the format with the best figures of 3/10.
For India, Sundar has played 35 T20Is, scoring 107 runs with a half-century and having taken 29 wickets.
(With ANI inputs)