Harsha Bhogle picks India's Test and T20I teams to play on the same day

The international calendar is likely to get crunched in the post-pandemic era. With no cricket being played since March due to the Coronavirus outbreak, some of the teams might have to play two matches on the same day. On the back of this possibility, the cricket experts have been coming up with Test and T20I XIs of the teams like India, England and Australia.

The commentator and analyst Harsha Bhogle has also joined the list now. He took to his official Twitter to mention his Test and T20 XIs and didn’t pick Rohit Sharma in the whites keeping the faith on Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal to do the job. The middle-order comprising of Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane selects themselves in India’s Test line-up while Hanuma Vihari also looks set to be a regular in the side.

Interestingly, he picked both Ravi Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja in the spin department and went with Wriddhiman Saha as the wicket-keeper. Harsha also reckoned only two seamers in Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami would be enough. He also kept Navdeep Saini in the reserves and backed him to play depending on the conditions. Shubman Gill, Kuldeep Yadav and Umesh Yadav were the other members in his reserves line-up.

Harsha Bhogle picks Pandya brothers in a T20I XI

Moving on to India’s T20I XI, Harsha Bhogle undoubtedly had Jasprit Bumrah and Rohit Sharma in the team. KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Manish Pandey completed the top four while he went with both the Pandya brothers, Krunal and Hardik Pandya, to take up the all-rounder’s slot. Rishabh Pant made it to this XI as a wicket-keeper with Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Deepak Chahar assisting Bumrah in the pace department.

The other spinner in the line-up was, not surprisingly, Yuzvendra Chahal who has been exceptional, to say the least in the limited-overs format. Reserve players in the T20 line-up were Shikhar Dhawan, Washington Sundar and Dinesh Karthik. To avoid any unwanted controversy, Harsha Bhogle also cleared that he hasn’t considered MS Dhoni in the T20Is as he is not aware of the veteran cricketer’s comeback plans.

Here are his tweets:

Test : Agarwal, Shaw, Pujara, Kohli, Rahane, Vihari, Jadeja, Saha, Ashwin, Shami, Ishant. Add-on Gill, Yadav, Kuldeep. Depending on conditions, a 15th in Saini.

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) June 6, 2020

T20 : Rohit, Rahul, Shreyas, Pandey, Pant, Pandya, Pandya, Chahar, Bhuvi, Chahal, Bumrah. Add on: Dhawan, Karthik, Washington. Need left handers in the line-up to counter match-ups. Many more options for the T20 side than for the Test side.

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) June 6, 2020