NEW DELHI – India’s opening batsman Rohit Sharma has been named the new captain of India’s T20 side, replacing star player Virat Kohli, Board of Cricket Control of India announced Tuesday.
The Board of Cricket Control of India shared a tweet saying Sharma was named the T20I Captain for India as it announced the squad for the home series against New Zealand.
.@ImRo45 all set to lead #TeamIndia's T20I squad against New Zealand. 👍 👍
How excited are you for the home series? #INDvNZ pic.twitter.com/wGCe0gBbL2
— BCCI (@BCCI) November 9, 2021
Sharma, the hard hitter batter, debut in 2007 for the national team. He also led the Mumbai Indians to victory in the Indian Premier League (IPL) five times while the franchise led by Virat Kohli failed to win the title so far.
Rohit has played 116 international matches of limited format cricket and amassed more than 3,000 runs. He also scored 9205 runs in 227 ODI’s and 3047 from 43 Test matches at an average of nearly 47.
Meanwhile, the development comes after former Indian skipper Virat Kohli announced to step down from T20 captaincy before the World Cup.
Kohli recently hinted that Rohit would succeed him in limited over’s format as the latter has been overlooking things for a while now, he said as he ended disappointing World Cup campaign.
Citing workload, the Indian star player said it’s been around seven years of intense cricket every time we take the field and it takes a lot out of you however he assured his intensity on the field. That’s never going to change. If I can’t do that I will not play anymore, he added.
Kohli, who took over T20I captaincy in 2017, holds the captaincy of the one-day and Test teams.
After the poor performance of team India in the ICC mega event, legend Indian cricket Rahul Dravid is also replacing Ravi Shastri as coach.
Virat Kohli is also not named in the recently announced squad for the New Zealand tour as he was given rest. The tour by Kiwis begins on November 17 with the first of three T20 games followed by two Test matches.
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