(Cricket news) BCCI selectors yesterday announced a 16-member squad for the 3 ODIs against West Indies. The team will travel to the Caribbean straight after the ODI series against England is completed. West Indies on the other hand will come into the series straight after the ODIs against Bangladesh. The 3 matches will be played at Queen's Park Oval stadium in the Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The squad has raised quite a few eyebrows and rightly so. The timing of the squad announcement was very strange because it has come before India start their ODI series against England.

India's squad: Shikhar Dhawan (C), Ravindra Jadeja (VC), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shubman Gill, Deepak Hooda, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer, Ishan Kishan (WK), Sanju Samson (WK), Shardul Thakur, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Avesh Khan, Prasidh Krishna, Mohd Siraj, Arshdeep Singh

Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah and Virat Kohli are all not a part of the ODI squad. The decision to rest Pant is understandable because he has had very little rest in the last two years or so. Jasprit Bumrah has just played the Test match and he is likely to play the 2 T20Is and the 3 ODIs against England. Resting him is also somewhat understandable, more so because he is an all format fast bowler. The absence of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli is a bizarre one for a number of different reasons. 

Both Kohli and Sharma were rested in the T20I series against South Africa after the IPL. Kohli has just played the Test match and is expected to play 2 T20Is and 3 ODIs. His workload isn't that high that he cannot play back to back tours. The same goes for Rohit Sharma who has already missed a lot of cricket since becoming the Indian captain due to injuries. The biggest problem with their absence is that their individual form has not been great. Both have had very average IPL campaigns and are really short of runs in blue colours. Playing more matches would have been very good for their confidence especially if they managed to get a few runs.

Hardik Pandya and Mohammed Shami are the other two players who are not a part of the West Indies but are in the England squad. Shami has not played an ODI game in 2 years and hasn't been part of the white ball squad since the T20 World Cup. Now that he is back in the ODI squad he is once again rested. He is yet to make a comeback into the T20I side since the World Cup despite having a good IPL campaign. Hardik Pandya since his international comeback has been in 3 series and he might be rested to keep his fitness impact as a precaution more than anything.

Avesh Khan, Sanju Samson, Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaekwad and Deepak Hooda earn a call back into the ODI set-up. Shikhar Dhawan will be the 7th player to lead India in 2021 while Ravindra Jadeja will be his deputy. It is unclear whether it is purely the decision of the selectors and the team management to rest the players or if these players are asking for rest and making themselves unavailable. Either way the selectors are taking a massive risk by constantly resting players as the best available team rarely gets to play together.

Also read: Rohit Sharma returns as India take on England in 1st T20I