Tilak Varma is promoted to vice-captain and Jasprit Bumrah returns in a group of 15 that doubles as India's Asian Games squad
India have named a 15-man squad for the three-match Twenty20 international series against Afghanistan, with Shreyas Iyer continuing as captain and Tilak Varma promoted to vice-captain. All three matches will be played at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi, on September 13, 15 and 17.
The same 15 players have been chosen for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, where the men's cricket tournament runs from September 24 to October 3. Naming one group for both assignments gives the side a settled look through a month that carries an international series and a multi-sport event a fortnight apart.
It is a squad built around players who have been busy rather than rested, and several of the names in it have spent the past week making their case in the Duleep Trophy semi-finals in Bengaluru.
Bumrah headlines a set of returns
Jasprit Bumrah comes back after a knee injury picked up during India's one-day series in England, which also kept him out of the two-Test tour of Sri Lanka. He is the most experienced bowler in the group and the one whose availability shapes how the rest of the attack is used.
Sanju Samson returns having missed the tour of Zimbabwe in July, and Varun Chakaravarthy is back after the injury that ruled him out of the same trip. Nitish Kumar Reddy and Washington Sundar are also recalled, restoring two all-round options to a batting order that had been thinned by absences.
Arshdeep Singh, Ravi Bishnoi, Axar Patel and Harshit Rana complete a bowling group that can be arranged as three seamers and two spinners, or the reverse, depending on what Delhi offers in the middle of September.
Sooryavanshi keeps his place after a Duleep statement
The most striking retention is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is 15 and has just finished a semi-final in which he scored 92 from 81 balls with seven fours and seven sixes for East Zone, then added 40 from 43 balls in the fourth innings as his side chased down their target against Central Zone.
That innings was played on a surface that gave nobody much, in a match where both first innings finished level on 266. Keeping a teenager in a national squad on the strength of it is a decision the selectors have now made twice.
Tilak Varma arrives as deputy in form
Tilak's promotion comes days after he carried South Zone into the Duleep Trophy final. He made 116 not out from 250 balls in the first innings and returned with 51 not out from 79 balls to see out the chase, finishing both innings unbeaten as captain.
He is the second South Zone player in this squad to arrive with a red-ball score behind him, and the leadership experience of that week is the clearest reason his name now sits next to the vice-captaincy.
Two keepers and a deep batting order
Samson and Ishan Kishan are both named as wicketkeepers, which gives the side the option of playing one as a specialist batter. Kishan finished 39 not out in East Zone's semi-final chase, so he too comes into the squad having batted under pressure in the past week.
With Abhishek Sharma and Shivam Dube also included, India can field a batting order that runs deep enough to take risks early, which is the pattern the side has favoured in this format since the last World Cup cycle.
Four names still to be cleared
Bumrah, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar and Harshit Rana have all been included subject to fitness clearance, so the final eleven for the first match will not be settled until closer to September 13. That caveat covers a quarter of the squad, and two of the four are frontline bowlers.
The full squad is Shreyas Iyer (captain), Tilak Varma (vice-captain), Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh and Harshit Rana.
