Asia Cup 2018: 2 Indians who are lucky to have been picked

The Asia Cup 2018 is all set to kick off on September 15 in the United Arab Emirates. The tournament will be played at the iconic cricket grounds of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. India are slated to play Hong Kong on September 18 and their arch-rivals Pakistan in Dubai on the very next day at the same venue in the group stage.

The Indian selectors dropped a bomb by announcing that skipper Virat Kohli has been rested for the Asia Cup. The move was baffling considering the importance of the tournament. India are the best cricketing nation in the sub-continent and anything less than a title victory in Asia's biggest cricketing tournament will be a humiliation.

At the same time, they have picked a few players who haven't played a lot of cricket in the last few months and whose form has been shoddy. Here are the two players whose selections are not justified.

#1 Manish Pandey

The Karnataka batsman has been in poor form in international cricket for a long time now. In the past, Pandey played too many innings spending a lot of time at the crease and not scoring at a healthy strike rate.

Pandey's IPL season with the Sunrisers Hyderabad turned out to be a big failure as he managed to score at a strike rate of only 114.

Talents like Shreyas Iyer, who have been scoring heavily in domestic cricket, deserve a string of opportunities to cement their place in the Indian side and the Asia Cup would have been the perfect platform to do so.

#2 Kedar Jadhav

The Pune batsman was a regular in the Indian team in 2017 before he lost his place during the South Africa tour due to a string of low scores and soft dismissals. Kedar Jadhav was picked to play for the Chennai Super Kings in the eleventh edition of the IPL.

His stint with the men in yellow was cut short after just one game due to a severe hamstring injury and Jadhav needed to spend some time off, subsequently missing the England tour. Upon his comeback, he played few games in the recently-concluded quadrangular tournament before he got selected for the Asia Cup again.

Since the start of the year, Jadhav has hardly played any competitive cricket and does not have a lot of match practice behind his back. In these circumstances, it was not wise to pick him for the Asia Cup and instead he should have been allowed to spend time in the domestic cricket.