Picture Credit: Twitter
India are scheduled to play against Australia in the five-match T20I series at home starting from November 23 onwards. This series is going to begin just days after the Australians defeated the Men in Blue by six wickets in the final of the ODI World Cup 2023 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday, November 19.
The first T20I will happen at the Dr. Y. S. Rajashekar Reddy ACA–VDCA International Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam, before the series moves to the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram and the Barsapara International Stadium in Guwahati on November 26 and 28 respectively. The fourth T20I will go down at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium in Raipur before the final match takes place at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on December 1 and 3 respectively.
In the absence of Hardik Pandya, the stand-in captain for the Indian cricket team in T20Is, who is ruled out of the upcoming series due to an injury, Suryakumar Yadav has got the leadership role, while his deputy will be Ruturaj Gaikwad for the first three matches before Shreyas Iyer returns. With all this background, SportsTiger looks at India’s probable playing XI for the first T20I against Australia in this feature article.
Batters: Y ashasvi Jaiswal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan (wk), Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (c)
Ruturaj Gaikwad, the Asian Games gold medal winning captain for India, has become the vice-captain for the T20I series against Australia after his stellar performances with the bat in the shortest format this year. Yashasvi Jaiswal and Tilak Varma rose to fame through IPL in 2023 while donning the jersey of Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians respectively, which led to them making their way into the Indian setup for the first time this year.
Ishan Kishan is going to bring his experience of playing the ODI World Cup 2023 to the Indian T20I squad, which will compete against Australia at home for the next couple of weeks. Suryakumar Yadav, who played seven matches in the recently concluded ODI World Cup 2023, will captain the Indian cricket team for the upcoming series after owning the T20I format for the last two and a half years.
