The Indian cricket team squad for the T20I series against Australia has a fresh look. The hosts picked only three players from the ODI Cricket World Cup 2023 squad - Prasidh Krishna, Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav - for the five-match series that starts on Thursday. With the T20 Cricket World Cup next year, this series provides a briliant chance for the players selected to make an early case for themselves to get picked for the marquee event.
The selected stars have got fair amount of exposure in the Indian Premier League. Among the players who have been picked, the performances of the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma and Rinku Singh will be closely watched as India begin a phase where they would want to give fresh faces a chance, with the 2024 T20 World Cup a year away.
Among the bowlers are Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar and Ravi Bishnoi. All of them have enough experience in T20s and have played for India. Axar Patel, Washington Sundar and Shivam Dubey are the all-rounders in the squad. Jitesh Sharma is the back-up wicketkeeper.
Two notable absentees in the squad are wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson and leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal.
Chahal, taking to social media soon after the squad was announced, shared a cryptic post, with just a single smiley emoticon.
Now the veteran spinner has taken a six-wicket haul for Haryana against Uttarakhand in a Vijay Hazare Trophy match. Yuzvendra Chahal finished with figures of 6/26 and accounted for the wickets of Aditya Tare, Jiwanjot Singh, Swapnil Singh among other.
In a recent interview, speaking about his ODI World Cup snub, Chahal had said that he is used to such situations now.
"I understand that only fifteen players can be a part, because it's a World Cup, where you can't take 17 or 18," Chahal had told Wisden India.
"I do feel a little bad, but my motto in life is to move on. I'm used to it now, it's been three World Cups (laughs). That's why I came here [at Kent] to play because I want to play cricket somewhere, somehow," he had added.