Former India allrounder Irfan Pathan has seemingly taken a sly dig at the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma after they were rested for the upcoming ODI series against West Indies.

The BCCI, on Wednesday (July 6), sprung a number of surprises as they announced India’s ODI squad for the West Indies series later this month. After the ongoing tour of England ends, India will fly to the Caribbean for a limited-overs tour. The Men in Blue are scheduled to play 3 ODIs followed by 5 T20Is against the hosts.

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The tour will kickstart on July 22 with the ODI series. And before the start of the series, the selectors have sprung a huge surprise by resting some big names for the ODIs.

Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant and Mohammed Shami have been rested for the series. The decision is a surprising one since several of the aforementioned players were recently rested.

Kohli, Bumrah, Rohit as well as Shami were not a part of the home T20I series against South Africa after IPL 2022. Rohit also missed the recently-concluded Test against England at Edgbaston after testing positive for Covid-19. Rohit will return to action with the first T20I against England while the likes of Kohli, Pant, Bumrah will miss that game due to playing in the Test.

The trio will return to action for the remaining two T20Is as well as the subsequent ODI series before missing the ODIs against West Indies. Shami, on the other hand, is not a part of the T20I squad against England but will play the ODIs.

Irfan Pathan takes a dig at BCCI:

Soon after the squad was announced, Irfan Pathan took to Twitter to react to it. While he did not mention anyone in his tweet, his message was very crystal clear. The former allrounder has seemingly taken a dig at the likes of Kohli and Rohit after they were rested once again.

Both Rohit and Kohli have been struggling with their form in recent months. Kohli, who has not scored an international century since 2019, struggled throughout IPL 2022, scoring 341 runs at an average of 22.73 and a strike rate of 115.99.

The right-handed batsman recently struggled to do well against England too. Rohit also had a forgettable outing in IPL this year where he managed to score only 268 runs in 14 games with 48 as his highest-score.

Reacting to the squad announcement, Pathan made it clear that he was not too impressed with the decision of resting Kohli and Rohit as he tweeted: “No one comes back to form while resting…”

No one comes back to form while resting…

— Irfan Pathan (@IrfanPathan) July 6, 2022