Ever since the retirement of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja after the t20 World Cup last year, the national selection committee has been on an active hunt for a new number 4 in the t20 format of the game. The front runners for that position as of right now are Tilak Varma and Nitesh Kumar Reddy and thats mainly due to their performances so far. Varma exploded for two centuries in the t20 series against South Africa , which is absolutely ridiculous considering the fact that he did it in back to back games. Naturally he should be awarded the spot under any condition moving forward, but Nitesh Kumar Reddy has put himself on notice especially after his century against Australia, who have one of the best bowling attacks in the game of cricket right now. Aside from those two, Rinku Singh is another piece ,who’s more slated for the lower middle order, but due to him being more of a pure batsman, it makes it hard to include him in the lineup. If India decides to roll with Reddy at 4, there will be more scope for Rinku down the order as there would be more room for a pure batsman. The interesting thing here is if India do decide to do something like that, they would be in more of a 3-5-1-2 scheme which would be a minor deviation from the t20 World Cup where they ran primarily a 4-4-1-2 for most of their games including the final. Needless to say, rolling with only 3 pure batsman in this format of the game would be a pretty gutsy move. The only other time this was done in the history of the sport would be the 2012 West Indian team, who practically had almost 6-7 allrounders and ended up winning the twentytwenty WorldCup that year too. Statistically, Tilak Varma boasts the most appealing line out of the three:
Rinku Singh
Tilak Varma
Nitesh Kumar Reddy
Taking a look at the t20 column only, Reddy seems to have the highest strike rate, however it should be noted that he has a smaller sample size of games he played in so far with only 3 recorded international t20s to his name. Rinku on the other hand seems to have an edge over Varma with his overall strike rate and he’s got a very healthy batting average to go with it. If for some reason Rinku is featured higher in the order as a pure batsman then this gives India more flexibility to play more all rounders at the number 4 to number 8 positions in the starting XI. With the 2026 t20 World Cup roughly a year from now, it’s safe to say there will be a lot of tests for this young side before an actual decision is made for the squad next year. It should be a year full of excitement and intrigue in t20 cricket. With that being said, who will be India’s new number in the t20 format of the game?