Focus on R Ashwin, Washington Sundar, Shreyas Iyer, and Suryakumar Yadav in the India vs Australia match – Great

All it takes is one day… Some of India’s top players may well be thinking, “All we got was one day.” At home, that is. After a victorious Asia Cup campaign in Sri Lanka, they are back on the road, in Mohali, where India begin a three-ODI series against Australia on September 22.

Their run-up to the series hasn’t been without its share of headaches, some good and some forced. But the team management is at least confident that players on the injury list will recover in time for India’s World Cup campaign, which begins on October 8 in Chennai, also against Australia.

He is undergoing remedial work at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru, and his inclusion for the third ODI, for which the entire World Cup squad is available, is subject to fitness. Axar is crucial to India’s plans, because he offers batting depth at No. 8, as he showed in that game against Bangladesh, where he made a valiant 34 to bring India within six runs of victory after the middle order floundered.

With the ball, however, Axar had his troubles at the Asia Cup. He lacked bite on some helpful decks, like in the Super Four fixture against Sri Lanka where he was the only India bowler to go wicketless in a defence of 213 on a dry turner. In all, he picked up just one wicket across 14 overs at the Asia Cup, and finished with an economy rate of 5.42.

But, for now, there’s no reason to believe India might not want Axar at the World Cup if he is fit.

Both have excellent ODI records.

Washington’s sample size, though, is significantly smaller than that of Ashwin. Washington’s 17 ODI appearances have come across six years. But in the opportunities he’s had in recent times, he has been prolific.

In comparison, Ashwin has played 113 games, but just two in the last six years. This begs the question: if Ashwin was in India’s plans as a back-up, shouldn’t he have been in the squad a lot earlier?

Washington offers accuracy and control and can bowl at different stages of the innings. Similar attributes as Ashwin, but there’s a difference. Ashwin has been playing some form of cricket or the other all along – on Tuesday, he turned up for a local team in a 50-overs game in Chennai before flying to Mohali. Washington’s fitness has let him down often over the past three years.

He has, however, largely been injury-free since July, when he came back from a hamstring injury that ruled him out of the second half of IPL 2023. He was also on the tour of Ireland, prior to which he featured in both red-ball and white-ball matches in the domestic circuit.

Washington has been a long-running project for the team management since being earmarked as an allrounder good enough to bat in the top five. For now, he offers everything Axar does in the lower order, which may give him the edge if it comes to a shootout with Ashwin.

Now, if the team management fields one or both of Ashwin and Washington in the XIs against Australia, along with Ravindra Jadeja, who is the vice-captain, it could give some hints as to which way they will eventually go if Axar is ruled out.

In focus: Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Mohammed Shami

For someone who wasn’t perhaps totally ready for the Asia Cup, fitness-wise, and was told minutes prior to the toss against Pakistan that he would be playing, and then to respond with a superb century, the wheels of fortune seem to have turned big time. It’s the kind of sequence of events players needs at times to turn around not just their immediate fortunes but their careers as well.

India’s previous ODI series against Australia earlier this year was seen as the start of the final stretch of games in the lead-up to the World Cup. This series will be a formation lap before the teams meet in Chennai in a little over two weeks, with everything on the line.