No Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma! Kaneria's T20 XI of 2021 features Bumrah, Rishabh Pant & 2 more Indians

Danish Kaneria, the former Pakistan spinner, recently revealed his T20 XI of the year. With the calendar year coming to an end, there was plenty of cricketing action across formats. In the shortest format, the T20 World Cup was held in the UAE in the last quarter whereas several bilateral series also took place, across the globe, as a build-up for the marquee event.

Hence, many top stars performed as per expectations whereas some new faces impressed the most. On the other hand, some big names failed to live upto expectations. In this regard, Kaneria's list features some top names from the game but didn't have both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma; two of the most consistent performers in the format and among the top-three run-getters in T20Is overall.

Kaneria told on his Youtube channel, "Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam are my openers as performed really well throughout 2021. They were outstanding in the T20 World Cup (2021) and they played well in the recently concluded series against West Indies as well," Kaneria said. 

"People will say at one down it should be Rohit Sharma or KL Rahul or Virat Kohli but no I have a different opinion, I will go with Jos Buttler. He (Buttler) played really well and he had also scored a hundred in World Cup. So, he deserves the spot," Kaneria explained. 

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The rest of his line-up comprised England's big-hitter Liam Livingstone (who had a decent T20 WC), Mitchell Marsh (Player-of-the-Match in T20 WC finale), Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin (who has 9 scalps from 5 T20Is since his comeback in limited-overs setup) and Adam Zampa whereas his pacers included Shaheen Afridi, Trent Boult and Jasprit Bumrah. Rishabh Pant was named as the 12th man.

For the unversed, Kohli amassed 299 in 8 innings at 74.75 along with 4 fifties in the shortest format in 2021. Rohit, on the other hand, ended with 424 runs at a strike-rate of 150.88 with 5 half-centuries.

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Danish Kaneria's T20 XI of 2021:

Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Jos Buttler, Liam Livingstone, Mitchell Marsh, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravi Ashwin, Shaheen Afridi, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah, Adam Zampa; Rishabh Pant (12th Man).