Shreyas Iyer, who recently led the India A side which played against the New Zealanders, has been named in the T20I squad for the series against New Zealand which will commence after the culmination of the ongoing ODI leg.
Hyderabad’s rising fast bowler Mohammad Siraj has also earned an international call-up. He will be replacing Ashish Nehra who retired from international cricket after the recently concluded T20 series against Australia.
The duo’s inclusion is another indication of Kohli & selectors trying to give youngsters better opportunity to prove their talent in the process of creating the best possible team for the 2019 Cricket World Cup.
Iyer, who plays for Mumbai in the domestic scene, has been one of the most talented top-order batsman in the country at the moment. He made his first-class debut in 2014 and topped the run-getters chart for Mumbai in his debut season. This performance paved the way for his entry to the IPL where he was picked by the Delhi Daredevils. He fared quite well in the T20 league as well scoring 439 runs in his debut season.
Following his announcement in the domestic scene, Iyer continued to flourish and ended up as the highest run-getter in the next Ranji season with 1321 runs. At an average of 73.38. In the IPL he continued to be one of the key men in the Delhi Daredevils squad after getting retained for a whopping 2.6 crores.
He was in great form in the recent “A” series against South Africa and New Zealand.
“I feel like I am very much part of the team. The team has some quality batsmen at present, but I know my time will come and I just need to be patient and score runs consistently, he said before the start of the “A” series against New Zealand.
“I am not someone who believes in getting into other people’s space. I like doing my own job and the interactions that I have had with the members of the senior team has been more about trying to learn from them and not about my position in the pecking order.”
Mohammad Siraj, on the other hand, has had a very short journey in comparison to Iyer having made his IPL debut in 2016. Hailing from Hyderabad, the 23-year-old is known for his nippy pace and smart attitude.
Here is India’s T20I Squad for NZ series:
Virat Kohli (c), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Manish Pandey, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Mohammad Siraj.