Shami officially replaces injured Bumrah in India's World Cup squad

Mohammed Shami was officially named as the injured Jasprit Bumrah's replacement in India's T20 World Cup squad on Friday. "The All-India Senior Selection Committee has named Mohammed Shami as Jasprit Bumrah's replacement in India's ICC Men's T20 World Cup squad. Shami has reached Australia and will link up with the squad in Brisbane ahead of the warm-up matches," BCCI said in a release.

In another major development, Shardul Thakur and Mohammed Siraj have been added as backups or standby players. Siraj replaced Shami, who was a part of the standby players initially while Shardul was picked as a like-for-like replacement for Deepak Chahar, who too has been ruled out of the T20 World Cup with a back injury just like Bumrah.

The announcement of Bumrah's injury replacement was delayed because Shami had to prove his fitness at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru after he had been pushed away from cricket due to a bout with Covid-19.

The veteran seamer, who hasn't played a T20I since last year's T20 World Cup in the UAE, went through fitness drills and got a fit certificate from the NCA. He took the flight to Australia on Thursday and has joined the rest of the Indian squad members in Brisbane where they are slated to play two official warm-up matches against Australia on October 17 and New Zealand on October 19 before starting their Super 12 campaign against Pakistan on October 23 in Melbourne.

The Rohit Sharma-led side was stationed in Perth till Friday after arriving in Australia on October 6. They played two warm-up matches against Western Australia. They won the first match by 13 runs but lost the second one by 36 runs.

Shami is believed to have gotten the nod ahead of an in-form Siraj despite not playing a white-ball match for India since July this year, because of his experience and skills with the ball. Apart from the fact that he was always the preferred choice since he was in the official standby list, what went in Shami's favour is his ability to adapt to the Australian conditions.

He was one of India's top bowlers when an ICC event was held in Australia the last time around in 2015.

Revised India squad for ICC T20 World Cup: Rohit Sharma (Captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami.