Courtesy: BCCI
On Thursday, November 7, Suryakumar Yadav, the Indian T20I captain, reportedly suffered an injury during a practice session at the Kingsmead in Durban just a day prior to the first T20I of the four-match series against hosts South Africa. There is no update on the exact nature of Suryakumar Yadav’s injury, but if it ends up being a serious one, then he might get ruled out of the first T20I, if not the entire series in the Rainbow nation.
After being appointed as the full-time captain of the Indian T20I team, Suryakumar Yadav and his players have made quite a statement with six wins on the spin, three each against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh respectively. But the challenge is expected to get a lot tougher for the Indian cricket team on the tour to South Africa, against whom they won the final of the T20 World Cup 2024 in the summer.
Sports journalist Vaibhav Bhola took to his X account to break the news that Suryakumar Yadav injured himself with a picture of him from the practice session ahead of the first T20I of the series between India and South Africa. He also posed a question about Suryakumar Yadav potentially missing out the entire T20I series, which gives an indication that the right-handed batter’s injury might be a serious one.
In case Suryakumar Yadav misses out on any of the matches against South Africa in the T20I series, it is likely that Hardik Pandya, who has captained India in the shortest format in the recent past, might take over from him. Regardless, India and South Africa are expected to deliver some pulsating cricket when they take the field during all the four T20I matches in the series in the next week or so.
Below are the Indian and South African squads for the upcoming four-match T20I series:
India squad: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Rinku Singh, Tilak Varma, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Avesh Khan, and Yash Dayal
South Africa squad: Aiden Markram (c), Ottneil Baartman, Gerald Coetzee, Donovan Ferreira, Reeza Hendricks, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Patrick Kruger, Keshav Maharaj, David Miller, Mihlali Mpongwana, Nqaba Peter, Ryan Rickelton (wk), Andile Simelane, Lutho Sipamla, and Tristan Stubbs
