Mohammed Shami’s return the focal point of India-England T20Is

The Indian cricket team will resume white-ball cricket after nearly two months with a five-match T20I series against England at home, played under the shadow of next month’s ICC Champions Trophy. 

This will be the first time that India and England meet in T20Is since the semi-final of last year’s T20 World Cup at Providence, and the radio silence from most of the British cricket media – their main headline are centered on the ongoing Women’s Ashes – regarding this series indicates how little interest there seems to be back in the UK. 

In India, conversely, the last two weeks have been all about the home team’s white-ball squads after the debacle of the Test tour to Australia. Sample some of the big talking points in recent days: Will Mohammed Shami be fit? What is Jasprit Bumrah’s fitness update? Will Kuldeep Yadav return? How many Test players will be rested? Will Sanju Samson earn an ODI recall? Will the selectors add Karun Nair after a record-breaking Vijay. Hazare Trophy? 

As revealed on January 18 after a delayed announcement, five members of the T20I squad are UAE-bound for the Champions Trophy, and much of the focus across these five matches will be on Shami. The 34-year-old pace bowler has been sidelined from international cricket since the end of the 2023 ODI World Cup and will play his first match for India in 14 months during this series. 

Is it not feasible for India to play Shami in all five of these T20Is against England, given that he is also part of the squad for three ODIs after that, and so there is plenty of speculation regarding his workload. His last T20I was in 2022, when India crashed out of the T20 World Cup in Australia after a 10-wicket loss to eventual tournament winners England. 

Shami played through Bengal’s Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy campaign and then came out of the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy unscathed after three matches and will not slot in alongside Arshdeep Singh as one of India’s new-ball bowlers in the T20Is. 

From the squad that went to South Africa in November, five players have been dropped – Jitesh Sharma, Avesh Khan, Ramandeep Singh, Yash Dayal and Vijaykumar Vyshak – and the replacements are Nitish Reddy, Washington Sundar, Dhruv Jurel and Harshit Rana – each of whom were part of India’s Test squad to Australia – and Shami. 

Since Suryakumar Yadav took over the T20I captaincy after Rohit Sharma retired after winning the T20 World Cup, the Indian team, ranked No 1 in T20Is, has won consecutive series against Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and South Africa. 

Snubbed by the BCCI selectors for ODIs once again, Samson has another shot at proving his white-ball credentials after a year in which he scored three centuries when opening for India in T20Is. Samson was the team’s leading run-getter in the T20I format in 2024, with 436 at a strike-rate of 180, having struck the most sixes (31) as well, and this renaissance came alongside a successful restructured top three comprising Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma.

Abhishek was inconsistent in 2024 but struck at 171.81 across his 11 innings, whereas Tilak, after recovering from injury, used the opportunity to bat at one-down and managed 306 runs from five games with a strike-rate of 187.73, while closing out the year with back-to-back hundreds in South Africa. 

This redefined approach to batting and risk-taking from India in 2024, allied by some very skilled bowling, was the reason for success at the T20 World Cup and three series wins in a row after that. 

Suryakumar and his team-mates now face third-ranked England, who over the past 12 months have won 10 of 17 matches in the format. During this time, England won series against Pakistan at home and West Indies away, shared a series with Australia 1-1 and made it to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup where they were eliminated by India. 

The series begins January 22 at Eden Gardens in Kolkata and ends on February 2 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Then the two teams shift formats to ODI cricket, with three games on February 6 (Nagpur), 9 (Cuttack) and 12 (Ahmedabad). 

India likely playing 11: 1 Sanju Samson (wk), 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Tilak Varma, 4 Suryakumar Yadav (capt), 5 Nitish Reddy, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Rinku Singh, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Mohammed Shami, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Varun Chakravarthy 

England likely playing 11: 1 Phil Salt (wk), 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Jos Buttler (capt), 4 Harry Brook, 5 Jacob Bethell, 6 Liam Livingstone, 7 Jamie Overton, 8 Rehan Ahmed, 9 Adil Rashid, 10 Jofra Archer, 11 Saqib Mahmood