Former India wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik has expressed surprise over the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) decision to sack Hardik Pandya as vice-captain of the T20I team. This comes after the BCCI did not list Hardik as the team's designated vice-captain for the upcoming five-match T20I series against England. Instead, all-rounder Axar Patel has been appointed as deputy to T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav. Karthik feels that the move to strip Hardik of the role makes no sense.
“I really don't know. I don't know why he (Hardik) was stripped of the vice-captaincy. I don't see any reason to (strip Pandya of the vice-captaincy). (India) has done a good job.” They won in the bilateral talks that he was the vice-captain. No idea,” Karthik said on Cricbuzz.
At one point, Hardik was leading the race to replace Rohit as captain of the T20I team. He even led the team several times when Rohit was rested.
He won three of the four T20I series as captain before Suryakumar was promoted after last year's T20 World Cup success.
Meanwhile, India will play England in a five-match series starting with the first match in Kolkata on January 22.
The second and third matches will be held in Chennai and Rajkot on January 25 and 28 respectively. The fourth match of the series will be played in Pune on January 31. Mumbai will host the final match of the T20I series on February 2.
Almost fourteen months after he last played an international match, veteran Mohammed Shami will make his return to the team during the series.
India T20I squad: Suryakumar Yadav (C), Sanju Samson (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya, Rinku Singh, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel (vc), Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammad Shami, Varun Chakravarthy , Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Dhruv Jurel (wk).
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