“You didn't need only 15” - Ex-Indian keeper believes selectors should’ve picked 16 players in the home bilateral series

Former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa has slammed the Indian team management and the selection committee for not having the 16th player in their squads during the home bilateral series so far.

Speaking exclusively on his YouTube channel, Uthappa stated that Rinku Singh, who made a comeback to the squad for the T20 World Cup 2026, should’ve already been part of the squad during the home bilateral series.

"Rinku should have been there in the first place. You should have just carried a 16th player in your bilateral. You didn't need only 15. It's a bilateral, you carry 16-17; who the heck cares? And you just reduce the team from that,” Robin Uthappa said on his YouTube channel.

"It actually supports your narrative if you carry 16-17 in a home bilateral series, and then if you have a World Cup squad coming up, you can actually pick out who you want to pick out," he added.

Furthermore, Uthappa believes that Tilak Varma could be someone who can take up Virat Kohli’s role as an anchor in the middle order. Speaking about Tilak's T20I numbers, he has played 40 games, accumulating 1183 runs at an average of 49.29 with two centuries and six fifties.

"When you're playing cricket that aggressively, and if you're following the template Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) follows in the IPL, you will do exceptionally well in patches, but that is not sustainable in big games. He (Tilak) can play the anchor, and that should be the role that should be handed down to him. The beauty about Tilak is that he can play both roles,” he concluded.

India’s T20 World Cup 2026 Squad: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rinku Singh.

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