Team India’s limited-overs format captaincy has been one of the most discussed points in the past few days. Now, Star Sports has ended up dropping a hint according to which it looks like Hardik Pandya will certainly lead the Indian limited overs side.
Star Sports accidentally promotes Hardik Pandya as Team India’s T20 Captain
Team India will host Sri Lanka for three T20Is and three ODI games in January. The selection committee hasn’t declared the squad for both series but Star Sports has accidentally confirmed Hardik Pandya as the new skipper of the T20 squad in a promo.
BCCI has invited applications for the position of National Selectors but the posts won’t be finalized before the commencement of the Sri Lanka series. Hence, The outgoing selection committee, led by Chetan Sharma, has been assigned the task of picking the two squads which will be their last responsibility as selectors of the Indian Team.
While the squads are yet to be announced, Star Sports posted a video on Sunday evening on Twitter with the caption mentioning, “Hardik Raj”. The official poster for the series that’s been shown in the video had Dasun Shanka, Sri Lanka captain, on one side and Hardik on the other. However, the broadcaster then went on to delete the tweet which raised some question marks.
Star sports used the caption, “.@hardikpandya7 is ready to kick-start the New Year with a bang against the Asian T20I Champions! #BelieveInBlue & get ready to witness some action from this new #TeamIndia under the Hardik ‘Raj’ Mastercard #INDvSL series | Starts Jan 3 | Star Sports & Disney+Hotstar.”
The video and caption have given some serious signals about Team India’s leadership possibilities in the future. Hardik led the Indian T20 squad in New Zealand and speculations were there that most of the senior players including Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli won’t feature in T20Is as they’ll prepare for the ODI World Cup scheduled in October-November next year. Star Sports reuploaded the promo with a different caption. Here is the promo of India vs Sri Lanka T20 series.
.@hardikpandya7 is ready to kick-start the New Year with a bang against the Asian T20I Champions, 🇱🇰!#BelieveInBlue & get ready to witness some 🔥 action from this new #TeamIndia
— Star Sports (@StarSportsIndia) December 25, 2022
Mastercard #INDvSL series | Starts Jan 3 | Star Sports & Disney+Hotstar pic.twitter.com/tgAOc2zAQf
The T20I series will begin from January 3 and it’ll be interesting to see if the baton has been passed from Rohit Sharma to Hardik Pandya on a permanent basis or not.