Rohit ‘definitely wanted’ four spinners for the T20 World Cup

India’s selectors picked four spinners in their 15-man squad for the 2024 T20 World Cup because Rohit Sharma wanted them, though he did not want to reveal his reasons for doing so just yet.

“I don’t want to go too much into detail on it, I’m sure opposition captains are listening to this,” Rohit said in Mumbai. “I definitely wanted four spinners. We’ve played a lot of cricket there [Caribbean]. We know what the conditions are like. With morning starts at 10-10.30am, there’s a little bit of technical aspect involved in this.”

India picked left-arm wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav, legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal and left-arm spin allrounders Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel in their provisional 15, which left space for only three specialist fast bowlers and no slot for Rinku Singh. Chahal was not a part of India’s T20I squads for their two most recent series – in South Africa in December and against Afghanistan at home in January – and was selected after his impressive form in IPL 2024.

“Maybe when I do the first press conference [upon landing], I’ll give more details,” Rohit said about picking four spinners. “The reason for four spinners is this, which I’m not going to say in public. But I wanted four spinners for sure. With two of the spinners being allrounders who can bat, Axar and Jadeja, and two attacking spinners – Kuldeep and Chahal – it gives you the balance in the spin department. Based on the team composition of the opposition we can decide what we want to play with.”

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Shashank Kishore is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo