As an all-rounder who bats in the lower order, my role becomes important
Shardul Thakur has been a regular in Indian teams over the last couple of years without ever seeming so. In Test cricket, he has been picked as the fourth seamer in conditions that force the team's hand against fielding both Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. Now in the lead up to the ODI World Cup, Thakur is a contender for the No.8 slot, balancing seam-bowling responsibilities with Hardik Pandya and offering useful batting and hitting depth lower down the order. The 31-year-old played each game in the ODI series against West Indies in an assignment that India were happy to experiment. While opportunities to show off his batting skills might have been few, a haul of eight wickets at 11.62 from the three games offered further validation of his usefulness to the side. This included career-best figures of 4 for 37 in Tuesday's deciding clash in Trinidad. Thakur admitted that it is a natural situation where a few players could have an eye on World Cup selection, he himself i...