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India will be playing a home T20I series against Afghanistan starting from 11th January in Mohali, which will also be their last T20I series ahead of ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024.
This series is expected to get lot of eyeballs as both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli will be seen playing T20Is for the first time after T20 World Cup 2022 semi-final match against England. Notably, it has been reported that Virat Kohli will be seen opening the innings alongside Indian skipper Rohit Sharma despite having players like Jaiswal and Gill in the squad.
It will be very interesting to see the playing XI with Kohli opening the innings as this could help India to play the sixth bowling option in the future (if needed) as both Ravindra Jadeja and Hardik Pandya look certain to be in the team. We may also see Jaiswal batting at number 3 position in this series to accommodate Kohli as an opener in the shortest format of the game.
India's expected playing XI for first T20I match vs Afghanistan: Rohit Sharma (C), Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal/Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma, Jitesh Sharma, Rinku Singh, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Mukesh Kumar.
Shivam Dube has been phenomenal for CSK at number 3 position in IPL 2023 and he has also played a few games for India at number 3 position. Hence, he may also be an option to play in that spot.
Virat Kohli as opener in T20Is:
- Inns - 9
- Runs - 400
- Avg - 57.14
- S.R - 161.29
- 50s - 2; 100 - 1
Virat Kohli in his last two innings as opener in T20Is, has smashed 80* vs England in Ahmedabad in 2021 and also recorded his highest score of 122* vs Afghanistan in Dubai in Asia Cup 2022.
