Srinagar, June 8: With Team India set to take on South Africa in the T20 series, everyone is keeping eye on rising pace sensation from J&K Umran Malik.
The 22 year old from Jammu had brilliant season in IPL 2022 with Sunrisers Hyderabad. Umran Malik took 22 wickets in the 14 matches he played, which included a five-wicket haul against Gujarat Titans.
On the back of his brilliant performnace Umran was got Idia call-up for the five-match T20I series against South Africa, which starts from June 9.
Two days prior to the contest, India head coach Rahul Dravid called Umran exciting but also hinted that the fans might not see Malik feature in any of the T20Is.
“He (Malik) certainly bowled quick and with pace. Another thing which has been interesting for me watching the IPL from the outside is the number of Indian bowlers bowling fast. And obviously, being coach of all three formats of the game, I would love to see that translated into the longer formats of the game,” Dravid said.
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“But it is brilliant in terms of watching Umran in the nets, you can see that he has got that pace. Obviously, he is learning. He is a young boy and he is getting better, improving. The more he is able to play, the better he is going to get. From our, perspective, very happy to have someone like him in the mix. We have to see how much playing time we can give him, we need to be realistic, we have a large squad, it is not possible to give everyone playing XI time,” said Dravid at the post-conference in Delhi on Tuesday.
“I think I am certainly someone who likes to have that consistency, give people time and let him feel settled in the positions. It would be interesting time to see how much playing time we give to Umran, we also have Arshdeep here who is brilliant as well. We have experience in the form of guys who have been with us before, Harshal, Bhuvi, Avesh. There are certain things we need to look at but it is nice and exciting to have a couple of young guys in the mix as well. It has given an opportunity for us to broaden our pool and see what they can do,” he further said.
India squad: KL Rahul (Captain), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant (vice-captain)(wk), Dinesh Karthik (wk), Hardik Pandya, Venkatesh Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik