India’s head coach Rahul Dravid said that captain Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal are their first-choice openers for now. This is because Virat Kohli isn’t playing in the first T20I series against Afghanistan. India and Afghanistan will play their first T20I match on January 11 in Mohali. The second game will be on January 14 in Indore, and the last game will be on January 17 in Bengaluru. Since Kohli can’t play in the first T20I, Shubman Gill could move up to No. 3. As promised, Dravid revealed that Jaiswal will partner Rohit at the top of the order. In the IPL 2023 season, Jaiswal had a great year and ended seventh in runs scored with 625. He then joined the team. A strike rate of 163.61 made him stand out from other Indian starters.
“Rohit and Jaiswal will definitely open with us right now.” When you have a group, though, you have to be able to do whatever needs to be done to help the team and give us the best chance of winning. That means nothing is closed. “But it’s clear that we’re pleased with Jaiswal’s performance as our opener. He provides a left-right mix at the top,” Dravid said at a press meeting before the game. Dravid also said that Test stars Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, and Ravindra Jadeja were not available because they had too much work to do. He also made it clear that Ishan Kishan was not yet ready for selection. Ishan Kishan wasn’t eligible to be chosen. Ishan asked for a break while he was in South Africa, which we agreed to, backed, and understood. He has not yet made himself available for selection. “When he is ready, I’m sure he’ll play domestic cricket and be ready to be picked,” he said. “And in the case of Shreyas Iyer, there was no moral reason for not including him.” The team had a lot of bowlers, but Shreyas Iyer wasn’t one of them. If you notice, he didn’t play as well in the T20s in South Africa, which is too bad. There are a lot of good batsmen, and it’s hard to fit them all into the squad and the starting XI. Dravid said, “There are no disciplinary reasons at all, and that was never brought up in any of my conversations with the selectors while they were thinking about each other.”
Rashid Khan will not be able to play in this match for Afghanistan because he is still healing from back surgery. Even so, they still had a strong spin attack with Mohammad Nabi, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Qais Ahmed, Noor Ahmed, and Sharafuddin Ashraf. Dravid was excited about the challenge that India’s batters would face. “We know they have some great spinners.” That means it will be a good test for our batters. And we’ve talked about it too: how to play and beat their spinners. “So it will be a good challenge, and we’re excited about it,” Dravid said. Indian teams will not play any more T20Is before the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean Islands and the USA.
