India vs Bangladesh: What Men in Blue will be aiming to achieve in upcoming T20I series

With the two-match Test series against Bangladeshi behind them, Team India gear up for the first white-ball fixtures of their home season – against the same opposition starting Sunday, 6 October.

The Rohit Sharma-led Test team had completed a 2-0 sweep against a Bangladeshi team that had blanked Pakistan in Pakistan by a similar margin earlier. This despite getting reduced to 144/6 on the opening day in Chennai and nearly three days being lost to rain, poor drainage and bad light in the subsequent fixture in Kanpur.

Also read | Rohit Sharma’s daredevilry stands out in Kanpur victory as India continue to thrive under his leadership

However, while the gulf between the two teams is massive in Test cricket, that isn’t necessarily the case in the shorter formats, especially Twenty20 Internationals.

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And while Bangladesh are better suited to the shorter forms of the game, the Men in Blue too are without several of their senior players for the upcoming assignment, with the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant and Yashasvi Jaiswal being rested to stay fresh for the New Zealand Tests and beyond.

Even though the T20 World Cup concluded in June in the Caribbean and the next edition will take place two years from now in India and Sri Lanka, the upcoming series offers plenty of context for both teams.

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Here are some of the key areas of focus for Suryakumar Yadav-led Indian team in the upcoming series:

Mayank’s big India debut

There is little doubt as to which member of the team will be hogging the most attention in the upcoming three-match series. Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) pacer Mayank Yadav had been hitting eye-popping speeds of up to 156.7 kmph that, together with his control and execution, and made him a household name during the IPL earlier this year.

Yadav’s heroics, especially against Punjab Kings and Royal Challengers Bengaluru early on in the season, not only made him the latest pace sensation in Indian cricket, it also led to several former cricketers as well as fans calling for him to be fast-tracked into the Indian team . Mayank however, could only make four appearances across an injury-hit season, the last of which was against Mumbai Indians on 30 April, which incidentally is also his last competitive appearance.

Having full recovered now following extensive rehabilitation at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), Yadav will be hoping to make as much of an impact in his maiden international series as he did in the IPL this year, hopefully not dealing with any last minute injury flare-ups.

Yadav, however, isn’t the only pacer who could end up having a debut series to remember. Though not his first India call-up, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) pacer Harshit Rana is yet to make his international debut despite being picked for the T20Is in Zimbabwe and ODIs in Sri Lanka.

While Yadav was primarily about raw pace, Rana had proved himself as someone who could excel in the powerplay as well as in the death overs, showing nerves of steel even in the most nerve-wracking situations. All while touching speeds of 90 miles per hour, albeit as a change-up.

Have India found Jadeja’s successor yet?

Moving onto the spin department, it’s been more than three months since senior spin-bowling all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja retired from Twenty20 Internationals alongside Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.

Axar Patel is the tailor-made like-for-like replacement for Jadeja — a left-arm finger spinner from Gujarat who’s explosive with the bat and a gun fielder. Axar, however, is already quite the senior at 30 years of age with 122 white-ball appearances for the nation, and it wouldn’t hurt for the team management and selectors to keep an eye on long-term prospects for the role.

This is where leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi and off-spin-bowling all-rounder Washington Sundar could stay ahead in the pecking order. Both Bishnoi and Sundar had been among the wickets in Zimbabwe and also had their moments in the T20I leg of the Sri Lanka tour. And the two are also in their mid-20s, thus presenting themselves as potential spin mainstays in the Indian attack in the years to come.

Time running out for Samson?

Another move that raised eyebrows was the selectors preferring Sanju Samson as the wicketkeeper-batter instead of Ishan Kishan, who at one time was viewed as an automatic back-up for Rishabh Pant.

Both Samson and Kishan had featured in the Duleep Trophy that had taken place last month, scoring a century each. However, Samson’s 196 runs appeared to have impressed the selectors more than Kishan’s 134, and the Rajasthan Royals captain was given another shot at making a case for a long-term role in the Indian T20I team.

Samson had been included in the tours of Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka; while he scored a sparkling half-century in the former, the Kerala wicketkeeper-batter came under serious criticism after getting dismissed for back-to-back ducks.

It’s not just the wicketkeeper’s role that he will be donning this series; with Jaiswal as well as Shubman Gill rested, Samson will be the senior opening partner to Abhishek Sharma – whose international career was off to an explosive start with a fiery century in Zimbabwe.

There will be plenty of white-ball opportunities for fringe Indian players to try and fight for a spot on either side of India’s crown jewel of the 2024-25 season — the five-match Test series in Australia.