India T20I specialists to board flight to South Africa on February 11

Updated - 09 Feb 2018, 09:17 PM

India, T20I, South Africa, Suresh Raina, Jaydev Unadkat, KL Rahul

Suresh Raina Photo Credit: Getty Images.

Table of Contents

The Twenty20 International specialist players for India, who are part of the team that will face South Africa, are all set to fly to South Africa on Sunday (February 11), a report in Sportstar suggests. This would also mean that they can play for their respective states till Sunday.

Suresh Raina will be available for Uttar Pradesh’s contest against Himachal Pradesh on February 11 in Bilaspur while Jaydev Unakdat will also be available for Saurashtra for the contest against Jharkhand, to be played on the same day.

KL Rahul has already been included in the Karnataka squad for the next two games too. Karnataka will face Haryana and Punjab on February 10 and 11 respectively.

It is to be noted that Raina did not play the first two games of the tournament as he was at NCA, working on his fitness. He flew to Bilaspur for UP’s third game against Bengal, where he scored 38 runs.

Akshdeep Nath was appointed as the captain of the side in Raina’s absence.

UP will be expecting Raina to do well in the final game he plays for his side.

The three players viz Raina, KL Rahul, and Unadkat will catch the flight to South Africa on Sunday and are expected to reach next day while the ODI players in the form of Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Shami, and Kedar Jadhav, will fly back to India after the completion of the ODI series.

They are not a part of the T20I series against South Africa. Surprisingly, Iyer was also dropped from the T20I squad of India.

The three games of the T20I series will be played on February 18 (Johannesburg), February 21 (Centurion) and February 24 (Cape Town).

Presently, both the teams are playing the ODI series, the fourth game of which will be played on February 10 in Johannesburg.

The Virat Kohli led team will look to win the contest and gain an unassailable lead over South Africa as India are leading in the series by 3-0, by virtue of winning the first three contests of the series.

Post the Johannesburg ODI, both the teams will travel to Port Elizabeth and Centurion for the fifth and sixth ODI to be played on February 13 and 16 respectively.