Mumbai and Delhi Daredevils Shreyas Iyer and Hyderabad pacer Mohammed Siraj have been picked for the three-match T20 series against New Zealand. The 16-man Indian squad was picked in Mumbai on Monday.
Ashish Nehra has been picked for the first match which will be played in Delhi’s Ferozshah Kotla on November 1. It is expected to be Nehra’s farewell game but whether the veteran left-arm pacer will be in the playing XI will entirely be the team management’s call.
The national selectors also named the squad for the first two Tests against Sri Lanka. Murali Vijay, who missed the away series against the Lankans due to an injury, is back in the squad.
Virat Kohli will continue to lead the Indian teams. There were reports that he would be rested.
“We are monitoring the workload of the players, rotational policy will also apply to the captain, but he is available for the Test series. We will monitor Kohli’s workload after the Tests (vs Sri Lanka),” said chief selector MSK Prasad.
Prasad said Shreyas Iyer has been rewarded for his current form. “Shreyas has been performing in T20s and first-class games. We will continue with him and nurture him,” said Prasad. In his last 10 innings, 22-year-old Iyer has scored two centuries and three fifties of which two scores were above 80s.
Thirty-three-year-old Murali Vijay, who has an impressive Test average of close to 40, last played a Test match in Dharamsala against the Australians in march, 2017. He and KL Rahul had opened the innings.
T20 SQUAD: Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Manish Pandey, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jsprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Ashish Nehra (only for the first T20).
TEST SQUAD vs SRI LANKA (first two matches): Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Hardik Pandya, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma.