Dhawan to Captain India on Tour of SL; Maiden Call-Up for Padikkal
The 20-member squad will play three T20Is and ODIs at Colombo against the hosts.
Shikhar Dhawan during a training session in Ahmedabad
Opening batter Shikhar Dhawan will captain the Indian men’s side in the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka with Bhuvneshwar Kumar as his deputy. The BCCI named the squad on Thursday evening.
The ODIs will be played on July 13, July 16 and July 18. The T20Is will be played on July 21, 23 and 25. All matches will be played at the R Premadasa International Cricket Stadium, Colombo. India will reach Sri Lanka on June 28.
Among the youngsters to get a look in are Nitish Rana, Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Chetan Sakariya, all of whom impressed in the domestic circuit and IPL recently.
The Indian team wears a much changed look for the series as Virat Kohli and most of the other first team players are in UK for the World Test Championship final and then a five-Test match series against England.
Varun Chakravarthy, who has had fitness concerns in the last year or so, has also been called up. He missed the tour of Australia due to an injury.
The Sri Lanka tour also marks the return of Prithvi Shaw to the India squad. Shaw has been in superb touch ever since being dropped from the Indian Test side, and is all set to open with Dhawan.
India’s squad: Shikhar Dhawan (Captain), Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suryakumar Yadav, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Nitish Rana, Ishan Kishan (Wicket-keeper), Sanju Samson (Wicket-keeper), Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Bhuvneshwar Kumar (Vice-captain), Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Chetan Sakariya
Net Bowlers: Ishan Porel, Sandeep Warrier, Arshdeep Singh, Sai Kishore, Simarjeet Singh
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