It’s been 8 years since Yuzvendra Chahal made his debut. As of today, he has the most wickets for India in T20Is and exactly zero T20 World Cup matches. Considered to be one of the finest leg-spinner in the world, he’s failed to find a place on the team sheet at the mega-event. With the T20 World Cup Final on June 29, it was Chahal’s last chance to make his dream happen.
3 T20 World Cups have come and gone in the last three years alone, and Chahal hasn’t gotten a chance. The leg-spinner isn’t just a T20I great for India but an IPL legend, having become the first bowler to take 200 wickets in the league. It was off the back of his performance in the 2024 edition that he got selected for the T20 World Cup.
Yuzvendra Chahal’s T20I record
| Inn | Wkts | Avg | Econ | SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 79 | 96 | 25.09 | 8.19 | 18.3 |
No faith in Yuzvendra Chahal
But 7 matches later, all he’s got to do is carry drinks for his teammates. At 33, Chahal isn’t young, and with Ravi Bishnoi already selected ahead of him in the past, it’s tough that he gets a go once again. As if not playing a single game in the T20 World Cup wasn’t enough, he was excluded from India’s squad for Zimbabwe as well.
Once teams got a grip on how to play him, Indian management lost faith in him. He continued to play for the Men in Blue somewhat consistently until 2022 but wasn’t picked for the 2021 or 2022 editions of the T20 World Cup. In the last couple of years, he hasn’t even gotten those rare chances he was getting. In the last 18 months, he’s played just 9 T20Is and taken the same number of wickets.
India’s Playing XI vs South Africa
Rohit Sharma (c), Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya (vc), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah.
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