"If you start thinking about your future now, then only you'll be able to put together a team in two years' time. I would not want to see some non-performing seniors in the next World Cup. I hope the selectors will make such calls."
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India’s humiliating defeat to England has opened up a bag of worms over the team’s performance in the T20 World Cup in Australia. Several cricket pundits have slammed yet another dismal performance at an ICC event, with former Indian opener Virender Sehwag not keen on seeing some of the current Indian players in the T20 World Cup in 2024. The former explosive opener avoided discussing the team’s mindset, instead citing the example of the 2007 T20 World Cup-winning Indian team, which included several young players. Sehwag believes that a young team will play better in the next World Cup with fewer expectations on their shoulders and will bring the country into a new era.
“I won’t talk about mindset and all but I would definitely want to see changes in personnel. I don’t want to see certain faces in the next World Cup. It happened in the 2007 T20 World Cup also. The stalwarts playing for all these years did not go to that World Cup. A bunch of youngsters went and nobody had any expectations from them and I would want to see a similar sort of team picked for the next T20 World Cup, nobody will expect them to win but that team will be for the future,” Sehwag said on Cricbuzz.
It must be mentioned here that during the 2007 World T20, senior cricketers were sidelined or they themselves did not want to play. India then sent a young team under MS Dhoni with a mixture of some experience in the form of Yuvraj Singh, Sehwag, Bhajji etc. But that team also had the likes of Robin Uthappa, Dinesh Karthik, RP Singh, Irfan Pathan, Yousuf Pathan and Rohit Sharma. Sehwag claimed that the team management and the new selectors must make the difficult decision of removing some of the more prominent faces from the current T20 setup.
“If you start thinking about your future now, then only you’ll be able to put together a team in two years’ time. I would not want to see some non-performing seniors in the next World Cup. I hope the selectors will make such calls. But the problem is will these selectors remain till the next World Cup? There will be a selection panel, new management, and a new approach so will they make the changes? But one thing is for sure if they go into the next World Cup with the same team and the same approach then the results will also be the same,” he added.
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