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Picture Credit: BCCI

Ashish Nehra believes Prithvi Shaw was handled unfairly by Team India and his IPL franchise Delhi Capitals (DC) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) the previous year. The youngster was at his best in this edition of the tournament.

Last year, Prithvi Shaw was a member of the Indian Team that went on the Australia tour. The batsman was dropped for the rest of the series after scoring 0 and 2 in the first Test against Australia in Adelaide. Following that, the 21-year-old was ignored for the home series against England earlier this year in all formats.

In a statement to Cricbuzz, Nehra said, "As far as technique is concerned, for any player, it is difficult to adjust. Even during the Adelaide Test, he wasn't a player who had a lot of experience or played 30-40 Test matches. We were talking about a youngster. To drop him on the basis of one Test match was tough."

"It's one thing that India went on to win the series but even then, I felt that he shouldn't have been benched after one Test match. Even during last year's IPL, I felt he shouldn't have been dropped. He played a few good innings but couldn't score runs. But I will always back a player who has more runs than Rahane when you talk of T20 cricket. I'm not saying that Rahane is not a good player, but in T20 cricket you need explosive players like Shaw, Pant, Stoinis and Hetmyer " he added.

After the poor display in Australia, Shaw worked on his game and scored over 800 runs at an average of 165.40 in the domestic tournament and also scored above 300 runs in this year's IPL in 8 games.