All but three Indian cricketers withdraw from T20 series against Australia

NEW DELHI (AFP): 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 Thursday 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.

Squad: Suryakumar Yadav (Capt), Ruturaj Gaikwad (vice-captain), Ishan Kishan, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar.