Virat Kohli back; Rohit Sharma to lead squad in Afghanistan T20Is

NEW DELHI: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli on Sunday made a high-profile comeback to India's T20 squad for the three home games against Afghanistan with the former also named captain for the series beginning in Mohali on January 11.

Rohit and Kohli last appeared in a T20 for India in the World Cup semifinal against England in November 2022.

Back then, the two veterans along with KL Rahul were seen to be playing archaic cricket in the powerplay and the team needed to move on from that approach with Hardik Pandya earmarked as the new T20 skipper.

However, Pandya's own injury in the ODI World Cup along and more recently, Suryakumar Yadav's ligament tear, resulted in a lot of inexperience at the top of the order.

The T20 squad also features Sanju Samson and Jitesh Sharma, who will be the two glovesmen with Ishan Kishan being ignored for the shortest format.

All-rounder Shivam Dube has also been named in the squad in Hardik's absence.

The Afghanistan series will be India's last before the World Cup, which takes place right after the IPL.

India's Squad: Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar. Agencies

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