India suffered a huge setback just a couple of days before their opening match of the 2016 Asia Cup as captain MS Dhoni suffered a muscle spasm in training on Monday. Parthiv Patel, who won the Vijay Hazare Trophy with Gujarat will join up with the squad as Dhoni's back-up.
After winning their last two T20I series, India were going into the Asia Cup as firm favourites, but an injury to their captain would most probably result in a major reshuffle in the batting order, and it will be a huge loss for the Indian team, who will be fretting over the extent of Dhoni’s injury.
2012 was the last time Parthiv played for India and that was in an ODI against Sri Lanka in Brisbane. His selection is thanks to his good form for both his domestic team, Gujarat for whom he scored a century against India A in the Deodhar Trophy last month.
In the Vijay Hazare Trophy this season, he scored 337 runs and led Gujarat to their maiden Vijay Hazare title and he also had a good Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, which he finished with an impressvie average of 42.12 and staggering strike rate of 162.80
Here is the official tweet from BCCI confirming news about MS Dhoni’s injury:
After losing to South Africa 2-0 in October 2015, it looked as though India’s chances of doing well in the World T20 on home soil was going to be unlikely. But a new-look squad that included comebacks for Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra went to the T20I series in Australia.
It was there that against all expectations, India beat Australia 3-0 and became the first team to whitewash Australia. India’s batting, led by Virat Kohli ensured the seventh highest run-chase in T20I history and meant they went into the home T20I series as the world No.1 ranked T20I team.
In the series against Sri Lanka, despite losing the first T20I in Pune in comprehensive fashion, India bounced back to win the next two matches and take the series 2-1 and retain their No.1 ranking.
Following that series, they left for Bangladesh on Sunday. They reached Dhaka and were preparing for their opening match against Bangladesh on Wednesday when MS Dhoni suffered his injury.
Also read: Asia Cup T20 2016 Full Schedule
As the extent of the injury is still unknown, it is still unclear as to whether Dhoni will take part in the opening game of the Asia Cup or not.
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