Team India defeated Sri Lanka in the T20I series thanks to the competent captaincy of Hardik Pandya. The Men in Blue were able to claim their first bilateral series victory of the year thanks to the charismatic batter Suryakumar Yadav’s flawless knock (112* off 51 deliveries) in the third game of the series. With being said, Pandya is still unbeaten in a series while leading India and is considered one of the front-runners to succeed Rohit Sharma as the T20I team’s captain. Ajay Jadeja, a former India international, thinks Pandya and the team’s management should play more all-rounders in the game’s shortest format. Jadeja emphasized that former India captain MS Dhoni was a master at choosing the ideal playing XI and that India should apply the same tactic by adding more all-rounders.
“If I have five bowlers and I am playing, you know exactly, either I will bowl X, Y, or Z. So, you can plan as an opposition, but if I have seven-eight bowlers who could bowl at different stages. How does the opposition plan against you? So, you run the game. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was a champion at it,” said Jadeja on Cricbuzz. “There’ll be days that Ravindra [Jadeja] didn’t bowl a single ball. Say, if you put in all four (Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Ravindra Jadeja), you can play all four. What’s wrong with that? Because they can all bat well enough,” he added.
Additionally, the ex-cricketer discussed the disadvantages of using too many all-rounders. The 51-year-old claimed that if team India employs this tactic, their bowling may appear a little weaker. “It’s just a wild thought. You can even add another all-rounder, say, bowler all-rounder, Ashwin kind of a person as well. The problem is that you still keep the top five-six batsmen, then add these guys as all-rounders and the bowling is a little weaker,” Jadeja added.
