India, after facing heart-breaking loss against Australia in the ICC World Cup 2023 finals at Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad, will return back to the cricket field once again to face Aussies. The T20I five-match series begins today, November 23 at Vishakhapatnam. The first two matches will be played at the ACA-VDCA Cricket stadium in Andhra Pradesh’s Vishakhapatnam from 7pm onwards.
The Men in Blue has opted to exclude the star players in the showpiece event from the T20I series and decided to move on with a handful of players from the World Cup squad.
While, the Australia will feature the majority of their world cup squad. Most of the team has stayed back since September. They have also spent the months of February and March playing the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and three ODIs. Only a handful of players including Pat Cummins opted to flew back to their country.
The India side would be led by Suryakumar Yadav, who has been recently appointed as the stand-in-skipper in the place of injured Hardik Pandya. Ruturaj Gaikwad will be the vice-captain for the three matches. Shreyas Iyer will join the team as vice-captain in the last two matches. While the Australian team will be led by wicket-keeper batter Mathew Wadde.
After the opening match, T20 series will resume in Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati, Raipur and Bengaluru.
The last time India met with Aussies in the shorter format in September last year in which India won the series for 2-1.
The T20 clash between India and Australia will be thrilling due to its timing. For Australia, Travis Head, who was awarded as the player of the match for his 137-run knock will also be in action in today’s match.
Indian squad: Suryakumar Yadav (Captain), Ruturaj Gaikwad, 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.
Australian Squad: Matthew Wade (Captain), Aaron Hardie, Jason Behrendorff, Sean Abbott, Tim David, Nathan Ellis, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Glenn Maxwell, Tanveer Sangha, Matt Short, Steve Smith, Marcus Stoinis, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa