In-form Mumbai opening batsman Prithvi Shaw has been ignored for the upcoming ODI series against England, as the Indian cricket team included Suryakumar Yadav, Krunal Pandya and the uncapped Prasidh Krishna in their 18-member list.
Prithvi Shaw, who hasn’t featured for the national side since December, captained Mumbai to their fourth Vijay Hazare Trophy title and created history by scoring 827 runs in eight games, the highest number of runs in a single season in the tournament’s history.
Despite this feat, Shaw couldn’t find himself in the plans of Virat Kohli and Co. as they already have four openers in Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill and KL Rahul.
Shaw shot to prominence with a century on his Test debut against West Indies in 2018 and went on to register two fifty-plus scores in his next four games. Unlike in Tests, the 21-year-old Mumbai opener wasn’t given many opportunities in the ODI format, where he has earned just three caps.
His failure in the first Test against Australia in December, where he registered scores of 0 and 4 coupled with his weakness to in-swingers exposing him, led to Shaw being dropped from the team setup.
Prithvi Shaw also found himself at the receiving end of criticism for the drawbacks in his batting technique - which is a high backlift. Due to this, the Mumbai batsman takes a lot of time to catch the length of the ball, something which was pointed out by Ricky Ponting while commentating in the 2020 Test.
The other concerns that continue to haunt Shaw are his temperament, attitude, and even fitness. Misfielding has also been an issue as was evident in the Adelaide Test, where the Indian had backpedalled on a Marnus Labuschagne pull shot before failing to catch the ball.
Prithvi Shaw smashed four centuries in the 2021 Vijay Hazare Trophy, including 227 not out against Puducherry -- the highest individual score in the competition.
These numbers indicate that the 21-year-old is on a road of redemption to return to the Indian cricket team, however, with the Chetan Sharma-headed selection panel ignoring him and Devdutt Padikkal, it’s a pertinent question: why hasn’t Prithvi Shaw been picked in India’s squad for the ODI series against England.
Feature image courtesy: AFP / Michael Bradley
