Rohit Sharma And Mohammed Shami Rested, Shikhar Dhawan And Jasprit Bumrah Return For Sri Lanka T20Is

India, on Monday, announced their T20I squad for the upcoming three-match series against Sri Lanka next month. Senior opener Shikhar Dhawan has returned to the squad after missing the T20I and ODI series against West Indies due to an injury he had sustained last month while playing in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Rohit Sharma and Mohammed Shami have been rested for the series. In Rohit Sharma’s absence, Dhawan and KL Rahul are set to open the innings for India. With Rahul doing extremely well as opener, Dhawan will be looking to hit the ground running against Sri Lanka. A poor outing could make things complicated for him once Rohit returns to the team.

Along with Dhawan, Jasprit Bumrah has returned to the squad too. Bumrah has not played for India since the tour of West Indies and was sidelined with a back injury. Deepak Chahar has also missed out due to an injury. Barring these three changes, India have retained the same squad that played against West Indies earlier this month.

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India favourites:

This is the first bilateral meeting between the two countries since Sri Lanka visited India towards the end of 2017 for a full-fledged series. India had hosted the visitors for three Tests, three ODIs and three T20Is. As expected, the hosts won all the series. They won the Test 1-0, ODIs 2-1 and the T20Is 3-0. Going by current form, India are the favourites for the upcoming series too.

India are high on confidence after beating West Indies in T20I and ODI series recently. However, the Men in Blue should guard against complacency as Sri Lanka can spring a surprise or two. Just a couple of months ago, the Islanders had stunned world number one Pakistan in their own backyard. Sri Lanka had thrashed the Men in Green by 3-0.

The series will start at Guwahati on January 5 while the second and third game will be held in Indore (January 7) and Pune (January 10) respectively.

India squad: 

Virat Kohli (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper), Ravindra Jadeja, Shivam Dube, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur, Manish Pandey, Washington Sundar, Sanju Samson.