BCCI has announced 15 member squad to be captained by Ruturaj Gaikwad for the Asian games to be played in Hangzhou, China.
While the squad features familiar faces and young talents of India, who are consistently knocking at the selectors door, fans are confused on what the hell is this Asian games anyway? Well, lets get into it.
Formally, The Asian Games, also known as Asiad, is a continental multi-sport event held every fourth year among athletes from all over Asia. The Games are recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and are described as the second largest multi-sport event after the Olympic Games.
Second after Olympic games makes it such a big event, but how come cricket is part of it?
Cricket was included in Asian games in 2010, and then in 2014. In 2018 cricket was not part of it, but from 2022 cricket was included again. The 2023 Asian games are actually the 2022 Asian games which got postponed. The current dates for the event are from Sep 23 – Oct 8, 2023.
The previous edition of 2010 and 2014 was won by Bangladesh and Srilanka which featured familiar faces like Upul Tharanga, Shakib Ul Hasan.
Pakistan participated in 2010 but was not part of 2014. For India, this will be their first time competing for cricket in Asian games.
With World cup starting from 5 October 2023, it means all the teams participating in it will be sending the backup team, their B team to participate in the event. BCCI has announced the following team to take part in the event:
Ruturaj (C), Jaiswal, Tripathi, Tilak Varma, Rinku, Jitesh, Washington, Shahbaz Ahmed, Bishnoi, Avesh, Arshdeep, Mukesh Kumar, Shivam Mavi, Dube and Prabhsimran.
While all the familiar names have made it to the list. Two wicketkeepers in the names of Jitesh and Prabhsimran Singh tells, BCCI wants all the potential replacements of Rishabh Pant, to showcase their talent on big stages, hence the name Prabhsimran Singh who played a superb knock of 103 runs of 65 balls, which included 10 boundaries and 6 mighty sixes against Delhi capitals in IPL 2023.
With India playing their first World Cup 2023 match against Australia in Chennai on 8 October and Asian games to last till 8 October, it will be interesting to see if some of the players from above team will be included in the World cup squad or not.
In particular, fans will certainly want some of the names from the list to be part of World cup squad in the names of Jaiswal, Rinku Singh and captain himself Ruturaj Gaikwad.
With Gill not in the list, its very much clear, he is likely to open with Rohit Sharma in the World cup 2023, but things can change quite fast in cricket as Jaiswal and Ruturaj will not make it any easier for the opening slot.
Well, only time will tell who from the above list, will also be playing the World Cup 2023, we are excited as Indian cricket team will be debuting in the Asian games for the very first time and we expect nothing less than Gold from this well balanced team.
