There were no surprise selections in the India ODI squad for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017. Virat Kohli joined the team selection meeting via video conference on Monday morning and he made sure that he has the best set of fit players in his side.
India are the defending champions and Kohli will go all out guns to add this feather to his cap as well. Asa a result, The Team selection committee, headed by MSK Prasad also announced five more players, who are on a standby list.
Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthik and Shardul Thakur are the players who are on this list and will train at the National Cricket Academy until their visas are arranged.
"We definitely considered the name of Kuldeep. He would have been a surprise package but whether we would have played with two spinners is a question. Since Yuvraj (Singh) and Kedar (Jadhav) can bowl spin, he narrowly missed out," Prasad told the media after the squad was announced.
Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa's performance in the ongoing IPL 2017 have been phenomenal. But Gambhir said himself that playing well in the IPL cannot be criteria to sneak into the India ODI squad.
"We respect IPL but in the longer format, we have to also consider the English conditions that we are playing in. Not just IPL but one needs to take into account the performance of last one year also in such a big tournament," Prasad added.