IND vs SA: India will be hosting South Africa for a 5 match T20I series starting June 9 to 19th. The hosts, though, will be without some big-name players – skipper Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami are rested, while Ravindra Jadeja, Suryakumar Yadav and Deepak Chahar are injured.
India squad for IND vs SA:
KL Rahul (C), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant (vice-captain, wk), Dinesh Karthik (wk), Hardik Pandya, Venkatesh Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik.
The last time India hosted the Proteas was back in 2019 – when the word pandemic wasn’t really used in daily life – and the three-match series ended up tied at 1-1 with the first match washed out.
The squad from then and now has seen a number of changes – not least in captaincy when it was Kohli who led the side.
Here are the players who were part of the 2019 IND vs SA T20I series but now are dropped:
Batsman: Shikhar Dhawan, Manish Pandey
Dhawan opened alongside Rohit in both the matches in the IND vs SA 2019 T20I series, the left-hander scored 76 runs with a best of 40 in a match-winning cause. KL Rahul, who didn’t get to play a single game in that series, will now be leading the Men In Blue in Sharma’s absence.
Manish Pandey didn’t play any match in that series. While Pandey’s unremarkable batting at the international level has seen him fall out of favour a couple of years ago, Dhawan would feel hard done by as he has been looked past by the selectors despite racking up over 400 runs consistently in the IPL and not doing too much harm to his India form. India have now identified Gaikwad and Kishan as the opening backups.
All-rounders: Krunal Pandya, Washington Sundar
Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel’s presence – their economical bowling in particular – has seen Krunal Pandya being pushed down in the pecking order. Washington Sundar has now been struggling with fitness since last year. Deepak Hooda is the only off-spinning option in this squad.
Both Krunal and Sundar featured in the 2 T20Is last time South Africa toured India, and both scored 4 runs each with the bat and didn’t pick any wickets.
Bowlers: Rahul Chahar, Khaleel Ahmed, Navdeep Saini
India’s bowling attack for this IND vs SA series is completely different from the previous occasion. Out of these three only Saini played in the previous series vs South Africa and leaked 59 runs in 6 overs across 2 games for just one wicket.
Rahul Chahar was dropped from India’s team after the T20 World Cup last year while Khaleel and Saini were omitted much before with both of them failing to make a big impact.
