India's Alternate T20 XI

In India, cricket is not a game, it is a religion, something very integral and natural to Indian culture. Children start playing with the bat and ball from a very young age, often running away from schools and colleges and playing cricket by bunking classes. It seems to have become a way of expressing ourselves, just the way Football is in Europe and South America.Apart from being plenty of positives to take from that, there are several negatives aspects that one cannot ignore. The most major one being that, since there are millions of ardent cricket followers and lovers, there are plenty who are passionate enough to give it a shot.These people take to Professional Cricket, but very few, in fact, a negligible percentage of them are actually able to make it even average, let alone making it big.The likes of Amol Mazumdar, Wasim Jaffer, Ranadeb Bose and Yere Goud, among others, did not get opportunities to actually show their true potential. Many may blame the eras in which they played, as India never had any dearth of talent, with new and more impressive cricketers coming up in each generation.These players who could either never play in the Indian jersey or could not do much in the very few games they got to play, might have also proven to be extremely effective and impressive if made to perform together. They might have even performed equally well, or just minutely worse, vis-a-vis their National team counterparts.There are many such players today as well, who have shown immense potential and great temperament in T20 cricket, especially with the IPL becoming the cash-rich competitive league it is today. Every IPL team has some great talent in the form of uncapped players or players with less than 5 matches for India.Let us look at one such playing XI that could give good competition to the current National side in T20 Cricket.#1 Prithvi ShawShaw has been impressive for India A and Delhi DaredevilsThe very famous young boy who led India U-19 team to a World Cup win early this year, bringing the cup home after 6 years, Prithvi Shaw has shown tremendous temperament and consistency across formats, be it Tests, ODIs or T20s.He has been around for a while and has lots of experience of playing in foreign conditions, having played in England at an age of 13. When southpaw Gautam Gambhir stepped down from the role of captaining the Delhi Daredevils in this year's IPL, it was young Prithvi who took his place and did justice to it.

India's Alternate T20 XI

#9 Mayank Markande