Shikhar Dhawan-led Indian team arrives in Colombo for Sri Lanka series
Jun 28, 2021
Colombo [Sri Lanka], June 28 : The Shikhar Dhawan-led Indian white-ball squad arrived in Sri Lanka on Monday. India and Sri Lanka will lock horns in three ODIs and as many T20Is, beginning July 13. Rahul Dravid is India's head coach for the tour.
All-rounder Hardik Pandya shared a picture in his Instagram story informing about the arrival of the Indian contingent in Sri Lanka. "Touchdown Sri Lanka," he captioned the story.
The likes of Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, and Suryakumar Yadav are in the white-ball squad and many more youngsters are eyeing a debut for India in the Sri Lanka series.
Dravid on Sunday said he hopes the white-ball squad is able to give good performances so that they are able to knock the doors of selectors for a call-up for the T20 World Cup which is set to be played later this year.
"So like you said, rightly there are a lot of people in the squad who are pushing for places or looking to cement their places in the sort of T20 World Cup. But the key goal for everyone in the squad and in the team is to try and win the series, we have had discussions around it.
"That is the primary objective. We are going out there to win the series, hopefully, people get the opportunity to put in good performances in the course of us trying to win the series, and knock the doors of the selectors," said Dravid while replying to an ANI query during the pre-departure press conference on Sunday.
For the limited-overs series against Sri Lanka, Dhawan will don the captain's hat. Talking about leading the side for the first time, Dhawan said: "So it is a great honour for me to be the captain of the Indian team."
"I am looking forward to it, I have played under Rahul Dravid's coaching once, I was the captain of India A at that time, we had played against Bangladesh. I feel we guys think together, we are looking forward to the series, we will be looking to build positive things and there should be a very happy environment in which boys can express themselves and we get the best out of them," he added.
