Asia Cup 2018: Famous cricket commentator and analyst Harsha Bhogle has picked his best XI from the six-nation tournament. Harsha has formed the team keeping in mind the performances of Group and Super Four stages.
Bhogle’s best XI comprises of six Indians, two each from Bangladesh and Afghanistan and one player from Pakistan.
“If you pick five specialist batsmen, then four pick themselves. You want five bowlers or four bowlers then three pick themselves. And there has been hardly any all-rounders in this tournament. Look at the start of the tournament where you were looking at bowling all-rounders like Faheem Ashraf and Shadab Khan and Thisara Perera. And none of them did anything worthy of being picked. And so you need to start looking around,” said Bhogle as quoted by Cricbuzz.
However, the big surprise for all the fans is the omission of veteran wicketkeeper-batsman MS Dhoni. Instead, Bangladesh’s Mushfiqur Rahim has been picked as the wicketkeeper-batsman by Bhogle.
Dhoni has managed to score just 41 runs in three innings which included a duck against Hong Kong. “You at a historical team of all the players in this and the first name that goes into this is MS Dhoni. But in this tournament, he hasn’t had a lot to do simply because India’s batting has been so good,” Bhogle explained.
While selecting the bowlers, Bhogle’s first choice was Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah and Rashid Khan. The expert analyst then named his two bowling all-rounders in Mohammad Nabi and Ravindra Jadeja. The number 11 spot goes to Bangladesh speedster Mustafizur Rahman.
Harsha Bhogle’s XI for Asia Cup 2018
Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Ambati Rayudu, Mushfiqur Rahim, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Nabi, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Rashid Khan, Mustafizur Rahman
