'I've made my decision: Gambhir to drop Indian superstar from Champions Trophy match against Bangladesh'

Washington Sundar is expected to make his way into the starting XI for India's Champions Trophy 2025 opener against Bangladesh in Dubai on Thursday. It seems likely that either Ravindra Jadeja or Axar Patel will be dropped to accommodate Sundar. Visuals shown on Star Sports ahead of the match suggest that Jadeja may be the one to miss out. India's head coach Gautam Gambhir was seen engaging in a serious conversation with Jadeja, leading experts Abhinav Mukund, Piyush Chawla, and Mike Hesson to believe that Gambhir was breaking the news to Jadeja that he would not be playing against Bangladesh. Meanwhile, India captain Rohit Sharma was seen talking to Axar Patel, indicating that Patel may be retained in the playing XI.

India have gone in with two specialist spinners and three spin-bowling all-rounders in the Champions Trophy. Jadeja and Axar, cricketers with identical skill sets, played in the first two matches against England in the bilateral series, but India is unlikely to go in with the same combination against Bangladesh, a side which has a lot of left-handers in their top seven. In fact, Bangladesh's top three - openers Tanzid Hasan and Soumya Sarkar and captain Najmul Hossain Shanto are left-handers.

"There are a lot of left-handers in the Bangladesh playing XI. But these two cricketers have done really well for India. But I think in the first game, they should have gone in with Jadeja and Axar because Kuldeep can take the ball away from the left-handers," said former India leg-spinner Piyush Chawla.

Former New Zealand and Royal Challengers Bengaluru head coach Mike Hesson analysed Gambhir's body language further and said he was telling Jadeja that he has made up his mind of picking Washington Sundar ahead of him in the XI.

"He's (Jadeja) not playing," said Hesson when asked to share his thoughts on visuals of Gambhir talking to Jadeja, where the visual ended with the coach tapping on the all-rounder's shoulders. "You can tell from the body language that he's being told he's not playing. (Gambhir is saying), 'That's my decision. I've made it. You may not agree with it but thank you very much. You may go on to play the next one but for the first match, we're playing the off-spinner," Hesson added.

Why Jadeja is being dropped?

Jadeja, already retired from T20Is, has been an integral part of the Indian ODI set-up for the last 12 years. Axar Patel, for the longest period, has been his under-study. Axar, in fact, missed out on a spot in India's ODI World Cup squad as the management took a last-minute decision to add Ravichandran Ashwin to the squad. But Axar has shown a lot of improvement in all three departments of the game and has risen as India's premier left-arm spin-bowling all-rounder in white-ball cricket.

If it boils to a choice between Axar and Jadeja and then the former is likely to be preferred over the veteran, which appears to be the case in the Champions Trophy opener.

Sundar, meanwhile, is Gambhir's choice. Like Harshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy, Gambhir is believed to be heavily in favour of the Tamil Nadu all-rounder.

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