INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
NEW DELHI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Monday named Suryakumar Yadav as skipper for the 5-match T20I series against
Australia starting November 23 in Visakhapatnam
Opener Ruturaj Gaikwad has been named as vice-captain for the series against the newly-crowned ODI champions, as the hosts only picked three
the last two T20Is in Raipur and Bengaluru and he will take over the role of vice-captain from Gaikwad.Ranked as the No 1 batsman in T20Is
for a while now, 'SKY' was chosen as the captain for this series -- first time he will be captaining India -- after it became clear that
star all-rounder Hardik Pandya, who suffered a bad ankle injury his during the World Cup, is not likely to return to action the next couple
After a draining campaign in the recent ODI World Cup, India expectedly did not pick many senior players in the 15-member squad, with only
Suryakumar, Prasidh and Ishan crossing over for the T20Is
The selectors felt that these three players have not played enough cricket to warrant workload management at this moment.Axar Patel has also
found a place in the squad after he missed the quadrennial big bash with a left quadriceps injury.However, the left-arm spinner returned to
competitive cricket last month for Gujarat in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where he played two matches against Punjab and Railways.When it
comes to the younger names in the squad, those players already have considerable exposure to the top-level cricket as they were part of the
Indian squad for the three-match T20I series against Ireland and then for the Asian Games in Hangzhou.The mandarins pegged the selection of
players mainly on them having two good successive IPL seasons and the members in the squad have that against their names.However, some of
the performers in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy such as batters Riyan Parag, Abhishek Sharma and veteran pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar could not
find a berth in the squad.Bhuvneshwar has picked up 16 wickets from seven matches in the SMAT at an impressive economy of 5.84 but the
selectors felt that his pace has dropped considerably, barely averaging 130 kmph.Parag and Sharma were in contention after their excellent
Parag, who plays for Assam, was the leading run-scorer in the tournament with 510 runs from 10 matches, including seven fifties with a
strike rate of 182.Punjab left-hander Sharma, who is also a useful left-arm spinner, was the second highest run-getter in the SMAT with 485
runs from 10 matches, including two hundreds and three fifties with a strike-rate of 192.But the powers that be felt that while these two
players held out promise, they needed to show more consistency in the IPL to merit a place in the national side.Sanju Samson might have been
hoping to find a place in the squad but the Kerala batsmen was a notable absentee.Perhaps, his lukewarm effort in the SMAT forced the
selectors to overlook him for the time being.Samson made a modest 138 runs from eight matches at an average of 27 and his strike-rate
He had made two fifties in the event.However, Samson will get a chance to impress the selectors in the upcoming Vijay Hazare one-day
tournament while leading Kerala.Former India batter VVS Laxman will be the head coach of the team for the series.India 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.How Pat Cummins silenced the
Ahmedabad crowd with Aussie team's flawless performance in the finals(With inputs from PTI)
