Suryakumar to captain India for Australia series

Suryakumar Yadav will captain India in their five-match T20 series against Australia, leading a squad with just three members of the team that lost the World Cup final.
India went into Sunday’s World Cup final in front of nearly 100,000 fans in Ahmedabad undefeated in the lead-up games of the tournament and favourites to capture the one-day crown.
But Rohit Sharma’s team was outplayed by Pat Cummins’s Australia, suffering a six-wicket defeat and breaking the hearts of millions across the country.
Suryakumar, who was just one of three players from the one-day team to be selected for the T20 squad, will captain India for the first time.
India and Australia had also faced each other in a three-match series in September ahead of the World Cup, also in India, which the hosts won 2-1.
The T20 series opens tomorrow in Visakhapatnam in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, followed by Thiruvananthapuram on November 26 and Guwahati on November 28.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said that Shreyas Iyer will join the squad as vice-captain for the last two T20s, in Raipur on December 1 and in Bengaluru on December 5.
Australia’s Warner withdrawn from T20 series against India
Australia opener David Warner has been withdrawn from the Twenty20 series against India after starring at the 50-over World Cup. The lefthander was Australia’s leading scorer with 535 runs at an average of 48.63 during their run to a sixth World Cup title in India.
“Selectors decided Warner would return home on the back of a successful yet demanding World Cup campaign,” Cricket Australia said in a statement yesterday.
Emerging Western Australian all-rounder Aaron Hardie has replaced Warner in the squad after making his ODI and T20 International debuts during the recent tour of South Africa.
Warner hopes to finish his Test career at his home Sydney Cricket Ground against Pakistan in January but has put his hand up for more international white-ball cricket, with the T20 World Cup coming up next year.
Test and ODI captain Pat Cummins and fellow fast bowlers Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc are also heading home from India along with all-rounders Cameron Green and Mitchell Marsh.
Matthew Wade will captain the squad for the five-match series which starts tomorrow at Vishakhapatnam. Fast bowler Kane Richardson has been called up as a replacement for the injured Spencer Johnson.
Just seven of Australia’s World Cup-winning squad will play the T20s, while head coach Andrew McDonald will also skip the series, handing the reins to stand-in Andre Borovec.
Squads
India: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Ruturaj Gaikwad (vc), Ishan Kishan, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Shivam Dubey, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar, Shreyas Iyer (last two matches only)
Australia: Matthew Wade (c), Aaron Hardie, Jason Behrendorff, Sean Abbott, Tim David, Nathan Ellis, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Glenn Maxwell, Tanveer Sangha, Matt Short, Steve Smith, Marcus Stoinis, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa
Series schedule1st T20I: Vishakhapatnam – Nov 23, Thursday
2nd T20I: Thiruvananthapuram – Nov 26, Sunday
3rd T20I: Guwahati – Nov 28, Tuesday
4th T20I: Raipur – Dec 01, Friday
5th T20I: Bengaluru – Dec 03, Sunday