Christchurch: India’s T20 captain Shreyas Iyer said teenage batting sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi will have to wait for his opportunities in the T20I side, saying he cannot walk into the playing XI just yet, as Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson are scoring consistently at the top as the team’s opening pair.
With Sooryavanshi graduating to the senior level after setting the IPL stage and U19 cricket on fire, the Indian T20I team has found itself in a selection headache of choosing between the fiery teenager and experienced Samson at the top of the order to pair alongside the explosive Abhishek Sharma.
Sooryavanshi has played in eight T20Is, and all of his outings have come in overseas conditions, as India have gone with their tried and tested top three at home.
“It’s important that a talent like him (Sooryavanshi) should always be happy around the dressing room. He is very young; he has more years to get opportunities. It’s not like he can walk in right now, because our openers are scoring consistently, and they have won the World Cup.
“I just keep telling him you will get the opportunity; if you be consistent about your processes, you have to wait sometimes. We have got two fantastic openers; that’s the conversation we have been having with Vaibhav,” Iyer said ahead of the T20I series opener against New Zealand.
India have played with nearly the same teams throughout the four T20Is in the recently contest T20I series against the West Indies, with the top order featuring Samson, Abhishek and Ishan Kishan. That has meant the 15-year-old has to warm the benches in all the matches till now, and he has not played an international match on home soil so far.
As senior pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar returns to India’s T20I setup after a gap of nearly four years, Iyer felt Bhuvneshwar’s return to the T20I side would give the team a boost in the five-match T20I series against New Zealand that begins on Thursday in Christchurch.
“Bhuvi, like you said, brings a lot of experience in the team,” Iyer said. “That was something we lacked; especially after the IPL, we had a lot of new bowlers. If you see Bhuvi’s career graph in the last two years, he’s won the IPL also, so he knows very well how to dominate this format.”
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