Suryakumar to captain India in T20 series against Aus, seniors rested

With the Indian selectors deciding to rest most of the seniors who played the ICC World Cup, Suryakumar Yadav will lead the Indian team in the five-match Twenty20 International (T20I) series against Australia starting in Visakhapatnam on 23 November.

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

The selectors announced the squad for the upcoming five-match T20I series against Australia on Monday. Former India batter and National Cricket Academy (NCA) chief VVS Laxman is likely to be announced as team coach since chief coach Rahul Dravid, whose tenure is set to be over after the World Cup, has decided to go on 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 (23 Nov), Thiruvananthapuram (26 Nov), Guwahati (28 Nov), Raipur (1 Dec) and Bengaluru (3 Dec), the BCCI release informed.

The team also 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.