Suryakumar named captain for 5-match T20 Series against Australia; Shreyas Iyer to play last two games

Mumbai: With the selectors deciding to rest most of the top stars that played the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup, Suryakumar Yadav will lead the Indian team in the five-match Twenty20 International series against Australia starting in Visakhapatnam on November 23.

With India losing to Australia in the final in Ahmedabad, the national selection committee, which met at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday, decided to rest all players minus Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan and Prasidh Krishna, who was included as a replacement for injured allrounder Hardik Pandya.

The selectors announced the squad for the upcoming 5-match T20I series against Australia on Monday. Former India batter and National Cricket Academy (NCA) chief V.V.S Laxman is likely to be announced as coach of the team as chief coach Rahul Dravid, whose tenure is set to be over after the World Cup, has decided to take leave after three months.

Ruturaj Gaikwad will be Suryakumar Yadav’s deputy for the first three matches while Shreyas Iyer will join the squad as vice-captain for the last two T20Is in Raipur and Bengaluru, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) informed in a release on Monday.

The five matches will be played at Visakhapatnam (Nov 23), Thiruvananthapuram (Nov 26), Guwahati (Nov 28), Raipur (Dec 1) and Bengaluru (Dec 3), the BCCI release informed.

The squad for the Australia T20I series includes most of the players, minus Jasprit Bumrah, who represented the country in the series against Ireland before the World Cup. Bumrah, who captained the squad in Ireland, has been rested after being part of the World Cup team.

The team brings back Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh and Ravi Bishnoi.

India’s squad: Suryakumar Yadav (Captain), Ruturaj Gaikwad (vice-captain), Ishan Kishan, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Shivam Dubey, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar.

–IANS