Can Arshdeep Translate T20 Success Into 50-Over Cricket?

The big challenge for the left-arm pacer will be to bowl with the older ball in the Champions Trophy

- Sanjeev K Samyal

MUMBAI: The absence of Jasprit Bumrah's genius often seems to cast a harsh light on the other pacers in Team India.

When he is around, the others can feed off his brilliance. But with him being ruled out of the ICC Champions Trophy, the spell is broken. Teams that would have looked to just play carefully will now be looking to go after the new ball.

It is this scenario that Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami, Harshit Rana and Hardik Pandya will have to tackle over and over again. And how they fare will have a huge bearing on the results.

In the Indian team's pace attack for the Champions Trophy, Arshdeep is the only one to have been a regular in white-ball cricket. Mohammed Shami is coming back from a long injury layoff while Harshit Rana has played a total of four games (three ODIs and one T20I). His experience will matter, especially in pressure situations.

For those who have tracked the 26-year-old left-arm seamer's career, it is no surprise that he is already India's highest wicket-taker in T20I cricket. He was also named as the ICC Men's T20I Cricketer of the Year 2024 after claiming 36 wickets in 18 matches during the period.

The Punjab bowler's graph has been steadily rising but his next challenge is to translate his T20 success into the 50-over format and that's something captain Rohit Sharma will be particularly banking on.

Irfan Pathan, who took 173 wickets in 120 ODIs for India, has no doubt of Arshdeep's ability to strike with the new ball but he is keen to watch how the pacer adapts to the challenge of bowling with the older ball.