Mumbai: The national selection committee named Kuldeep Yadav as replacement for Sunday for the three-match T20I series, the BCCI informed in a release on Monday.
India suffered a setback as all-rounder Washington Sundar was on Monday ruled out of the T20I series against the West Indies with a hamstring strain. He was injured during the last ODI on February 11 at Ahmedabad but ruled out on Monday, just two days ahead of the first match at the T20I series at the Eden Gardens here.
The national selection committee named Kuldeep Yadav as replacement for Sunday for the three-match T20I series, the BCCI informed in a release on Monday.
All-rounder Washington Sundar suffered a left hamstring muscle strain during fielding in the third ODI against the West Indies played at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Friday. He is ruled out of the upcoming three-match T20I Series to be played in Kolkata from 16th February, BCCI Honorary Secretary Jay Shah informed in a release.
The All-India Senior Selection Committee has named Kuldeep Yadav as Washington’s replacement, he said.
The two teams have already reached Kolkata from Ahmedabad where India had blanked the visitors 3-0 in the ODI series. The teams have held their first practice sessions at the Eden Garden ahead of the three-match T20I series.
Meanwhile, India batting coach Vikram Rathour acknowledged that all-rounders Shardul Thakur and Deepak Chahar have been working very hard on their batting skills. He added that the advantage with enhanced batting credentials of Chahar and Thakur helps the team management in flexibility of structuring the playing eleven.
In the absence of Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja in the white-ball side, Chahar and Thakur have stepped up with the bat, scoring half-centuries as part of lower-order in different times during ODIs against South Africa and West Indies.
Both of them are batting well. The reason for that is both of them work really hard on their batting. It’s not now but in the past few years, they have been working and practising hard on their batting. Now, you can see the result. So, really good to have two all-rounders. That gives us a lot of flexibility in what kind of team you want to play with. It’s good to see the competition happening in the team as well. They will be competing and are batting well, said Rathour in the virtual press conference.
In the recent ODI series against the West Indies, India had players like Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant get runs in the middle order. Rathour was pleased that different batters in the middle-order stepped up after the top-order fell early.
It was good, the ODI series we played in Ahmedabad. The wicket was a little challenging and was little tricky. It was good to see people stepping up after losing early wickets. We still manged to put up decent scores and won the series 3-0. It’s good to see people like Surya, Shreyas, Pant doing well in the middle-order. It was good.
India’s T20I squad: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Surya Kumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (vice-captain) (wicket-keeper), Venkatesh Iyer, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Ravi Bishnoi, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohd. Siraj, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Deepak Hooda, Kuldeep Yadav.