Team India’s tour of South Africa will end today after the third T20i of the series will be played between both the teams in Cape Town and this final match will also decide the winner of the series.
The Indian team has a number of matches to play in the near future as it will be playing a T20 tri-series with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh from March 6. The title of the series is Nidahas Trophy which is being played to celebrate Sri Lanka’s 70th year of Independence and it will go on till 18th March. In this series, each team will play four matches at the league level and then the finals.
As the Indian team has been playing continuously and IPL will also start just after Nidahas Trophy plus there will be some important tours after IPL, there are talks that many new faces may get a chance to play in Nidahas Trophy and some top cricketers, such as skipper Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya will be rested.
It will provide enough rest to the cricketers and also ensure that they are injury free to play in important tours coming after IPL. However, Dhoni may play in the Nidahas Trophy as he has already retired from test matches.
Rohit Sharma will again lead the team in the absence of Kohli as he has done earlier and has quite good experience of leading the team.
A team source said,
“What is the point of sending these cricketers after such a hectic South African tour.”
The team for the Nidahas Trophy will be selected today and there are strong chances that Rishabh Pant, Delhi keeper-batsman, may get a chance to enter the Indian squad as chief selector MSK Prasad was spotted having a chat with Delhi player at Palam cricket ground during a Vijay Hazare match.
Let’s hope that these new faces do well! What do you say?