Selectors pick Shreyas Iyer and Mohammed Siraj in squad for New Zealand T20 series

The only major change in the team was the selection Shreyas Iyer who will replace the out of form Kedar Jadhav in the shortest format of the game. Mohammed Siraj will be on standby after Ashish Nehra plays his final match for the Men in Blue in his home town of Delhi. 

Iyer has has been one of the more consistent performers in the India A team over the last few months and was the third-highest scorer, with 213 runs in five matches in the tri-series that included South Africa A and Afghanistan A. His best performance was in the final game of the series where he scored an unbeaten 140 off just 131 balls sealing the series for the Indian contingent. In the recently concluded series against New Zealand A, he finished with three fifty-plus scores which included a century as well.

The 23-year-old Siraj burst onto the national scene during the 2016-17 domestic season when he finished as the third-highest wicket-taker with 41 scalps to his name. His performance also earned him a lucrative contract in the IPL, where his home team Sunrisers Hyderabad splurged an incredible 2.6 crore, from a base price of 20 lakhs, to get his services. The youngster did not disappoint either, as he ended his maiden IPL campaign with ten wickets in only six matches.

"Iyer has been prolific across formats - in first-class, one-dayers, T20 - he's been performing consistently," MSK Prasad was quoted saying by Cricinfo. "If we pick a player, we will give him a long run. The same applies to Siraj."

India squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Manish Pandey, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Ashish Nehra.