2 selection woes for Virat Kohli to solve before the Australian tour
The Indian team suffered a humiliating loss 1-4 against England but they came back strong in this series as they registered massive victories by a margin of an innings and 272 runs in the first match and 10 wickets in the second match but still there are two areas on which there is a lot of work needed to be done, namely the selection of the third opener and the backup wicketkeeper.
The Indian team began the English tour with Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay as their prime openers but neither of them was there in the squad for the series against the Windies. KL Rahul and Prithvi Shaw were given a chance in place of them and while the former is going through an ugly patch, on the other hand, the young Shaw went on to become the 'Man of the Series' in his maiden international series which reduced the burden of the team management by a bit.
Rahul smashed a century in the last match against England so it is expected from him to regain his form soon but the problem lies in the selection of the backup opener. Mayank Agarwal was selected as the third opener for the West Indies series but was not given any chance and hence is yet to make his debut. So, this will leave the selectors with a difficult decision to make.
The second difficulty comes when it is to select the backup wicketkeeper. Coach Ravi Shastri has confirmed that Rishabh Pant will be their first choice for the glove work and there is no looking back to it, but it becomes necessary to choose the second wicketkeeping option as well when a team goes overseas.
India have already tried two players at that spot - Wriddhiman Saha and Dinesh Karthik. Saha suffered from an injury for which he had to go through a surgery and it looks difficult for him to make a comeback in the side in the near future while Karthik failed to impress with bat and was subsequently dropped from the team.
Former Indian wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta has given a suggestion of selecting Parthiv Patel as the backup for Rishabh Pant which will also solve the team's problem of the third opener.