MUMBAI: At last, Suryakumar Yadav has earned an India call-up. The Mumbai batsman was on Saturday finally rewarded for his blazing form in domestic cricket and in IPL-2020 when he was picked for the five-match T20I series against England in Ahmedabad in March.
Apart from Yadav, the other new entrants in Team India are his Mumbai Indians’ teammate, ‘keeper-bat Ishan Kishan, who, timing his knock to perfection, on the day of the selection, smashed a blistering 173 off just 94 balls to lead Jharkhand to a massive 324-run victory over Madhya Pradesh in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, and Haryana’s leg-spinning all-rounder Rahul Tewatia, who played a few match-winning cameos in IPL-2020 for the Rajasthan Royals.

“I’m speechless. I don’t know what to say. All my hard-work has finally paid off. I was waiting for this for a long time. I’m excited to don the blue jersey for the first time in my life,” Yadav told TOI.

It is apparent that Surya, Ishan and Tewatia have all been justly rewarded for their grand show in IPL-2020 in UAE.
While Yadav scored 480 runs in 16 [email protected], the big-hitting Kishan blasted 30 sixes in the last IPL — the most by anyone in the tournament, while scoring 516 runs in 14 [email protected]. Meanwhile, wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant, who played a couple of match-winning knocks for India in Australia in the Test series, has earned a comeback into the T20 side.

It means there will be three wicketkeepers — Pant, Rahul and Kishan — in the side.
Squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Yuzvendra Chahal, Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tewatia, Thangarasu Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur