Shreyas Iyer & Shikhar Dhawan's Bromance: Duo Undertakes 11-Hour Road Journey to Join Team in Ahmedabad

With only one match left in the four-match Test series between India and England, players who will be part of the upcoming T20 series have started joining their respective sides. On Tuesday, opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan and Shreyas Iyer joined their Indian colleagues in Ahmedabad where the 5-match T20 series will be played at the newly inaugurated Narendra Modi Stadium. The series begins on March 12 after the conclusion of the fourth Test to be played at the same venue from March 4 to 8.

Both Dhawan and Iyer were in Jaipur, taking part in the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2021, playing for Delhi and Mumbai respectively. Iyer took to Instagram and posted a story to update his fans about his travel plans with Dhawan. The left and the right-handed duo decided to undertake an 11-hour road journey to join the T20 squad in Ahmedabad. Sharing a selfie, Iyer wrote: “11 hours drive to Ahmedabad. Let’s see if the smile stays for that long.”

Once the two arrived in Ahmedabad, it was Dhawan this time who updated the cricket fans on Twitter. “Playing it cool with Mr Iyer. Great to be back with Team India,” he tweeted. Both Iyer and Dhawan played some brilliant knocks in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy before they joined Team India. Iyer smashed back-to-back tons — first against an unbeaten 103 against Maharashtra and then 116 against Rajasthan.

Playing for Delhi, Dhawan, on the other hand, played a blistering knock of 153 off just 118 deliveries against Maharashtra, successfully chasing a target of 330.

Meanwhile, India and England’s Test teams are all set to square off one last time in the longer format of the game from March 4. Indians had thrashed the Englishmen by 10 wickets in their last outing in the pink-ball Test at Motera in Ahmedabad. The match lasted just about five sessions after which the Motera wicket came under heavy criticism.

India have taken an unassailable 2-1 lead despite losing the first game by a massive 227-run margin in Chennai. They came back strongly in the second match, defeating England by 317 runs courtesy of Ravi Ashwin’s all-round heroics. The local boy first took five wickets and then smashed his fifth test ton to all but seal the game for India.

Besides Dhawan and Iyer, right-arm medium-fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar also returns to the squad after recovering from an injury that kept him out of the series in Australia as well. Here’s India’s squad for the five-match T20 series.

Virat Kohli (C), Rohit Sharma (VC), KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik, Rishabh Pant (Wk), Ishan Kishan (Wk), Y Chahal, Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel, W Sundar, R Tewatia, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Navdeep, Shardul Thakur.

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