Former Indian cricketer includes Babar Azam, omits Virat Kohli in his World T20I

Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra has revealed his World Twenty20 International (T20I) team, where he decided to pick only one player from each country.

Chopra, who featured in 10 Test matches for India in a brief international career, included Pakistan’s prolific batsman and T20I captain, Babar Azam, in his lineup alongside other T20 specialists. 

Azam has been a prolific run-scorer for Pakistan, across all formats, in the recent past. He features in the top five of ICC rankings for batsmen in all formats with first, third and fifth position in T20Is, ODIs and Tests respectively.

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The former right-hander also omitted India’s star batsman and skipper, Virat Kohli, and instead opted for pacer Jasprit Bumrah as the only Men in Blue cricketer to feature in the XI.

“At number four I have got Babar Azam,” said Chopra on his official YouTube channel. “Now you maybe guessing that if I have picked David Warner and Jos Buttler as the openers and Colin Munro at number three, then where are Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli? But because I can only include one Indian player in the lineup, I have decided to not pick them.”

“Slightly sad but what do I do? I can’t help it,” he added.     

Aakash Chopra’s World T20I team:

David Warner, Jos Buttler, Colin Munro, Babar Azam, AB de Villiers, Shakibal Hasan, Andre Russell, Rashid Khan, Sandeep Lamichhane, Jasprit Bumrah, Lasith Malinga