India will face Australia in the first T20I of the five-match series on Thursday. The IND vs AUS match will be played at the Dr. Y.S Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam from 7 pm onwards.
Suryakumar Yadav is excited to captain India in the T20s against Australia but says it will take time to move on from the heartbreaking loss in the ODI World Cup final four days ago.
Surya, who could have done more in India’s near-perfect campaign in the World Cup, was expectedly asked about the ill-fated Sunday night on the eve of the T20 series opener.
“It is difficult it will take time, it can’t be that you wake up next morning and you forget everything what happened. It was a long tournament. We would have loved to win it,” said Surya, who will lead the side in Hardik Pandya’s absence.
“But as you get up in the morning the sun rises again, there is light at the end of the tunnel. You have to move on. It is a fresh team (T20 squad), really looking forward to the challenge,” he said.
The T20 squad is full of IPL performers who are yet to prove themselves at the highest level. The likes of Rinku Singh, who made his debut in Ireland and was also part of the Asian Games, and Tilak Varma, will face their toughest test in international cricket against Australia.
“I met the squad in the afternoon today. I told them lets be selfless when you go on to the field. I am a guy who doesn’t think about personal milestones. I have told them to keep the team first,” Surya said.
Veteran wicket-keeper batter Matthew Wade will lead Australia in the T20I series against India. The 35-year-old considered his international career all but over 12 months ago as he felt that last year’s T20 World Cup would be his last for Australia. But now he will lead a 15-member Australian squad that will be without its frontline fast bowlers.
Australia doesn’t have a permanent T20 skipper since Aaron Finch’s retirement earlier this year and Mitchell Marsh and Wade have been doing the interim job.
Australia’s T20 squad for India series doesn’t have any uncapped players.
T20 specialists like Tim David, Sean Abbott, Josh Inglis, Jason Behrendorff and Nathan Ellis all feature in the squad alongside Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and leg-spinner Adam Zampa.
The frontline pace attack has been rested to manage their workload as the first Test between Australia and Pakistan will begin just 11 days after the final India-Australia T20I in Hyderabad on December 3. Australia’s first Test against Pakistan will begin on December 14 in Perth.