File photo of Gautam Gambhir and Ajit Agarkar© AFP
As debate and discussion continues surrounding India’s squad for the Champions Trophy 2025, former India cricketer-turned-pundit Aakash Chopra has raised the curious case of leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal. Chopra stated that Chahal’s career has been “finished” by BCCI and the team management for no apparent reason, arguing that the leg-spinner’s statistics were impressive even when he was dropped from ODIs over two years ago. Chahal has recently been in the news over a reported split from his wife Dhanashree Verma, and did not take part in the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2024/25.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, Chopra brought up the fact that Yuzvendra Chahal has been left out of India’s ODI squad for a long time, despite not performing badly.
“Yuzvendra Chahal has been totally finished. His file has been closed. I have got no idea why they did that,” said Chopra.
“It is an interesting case. He last played in January 2023. So it’s been two years for him. His numbers are also very good. He has picked up a lot of wickets and was consistently doing well,” Chopra said.
Chahal has picked up 121 wickets in just 72 ODIs for India, but has not featured for India in any format since August 2023. The wrist spinner gave the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2024/25 a miss, and Chopra said that him not featuring for two years meant he was never a contender for the Champions Trophy 2025 squad.
“Because it’s been two years since it (Chahal’s file) has been closed, there is no place for Yuzi also here because as soon as you suddenly pick him out of the blue, it will be seen as a regressive step,” Chopra said.
India picked as many as four spin-bowling options for the Champions Trophy, in the form of Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel and Washington Sundar, but Chahal was never really in the running.
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