Suryakumar Yadav will lead the Indian T20 squad.

 

 

 

Vidarbha Cricket Association is all set to host the first T20 International between India and New Zealand at its Jamtha Stadium on January 21. Around 10-12 members of the Indian squad including support staff will be arriving in the city by Saturday evening flight for the first of five encounters of the series. This series will be precursor to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup which is scheduled to be held in India and Sri Lanka from February 7. Maximum players of Suryakumar Yadav-led Indian team will arrive in Nagpur on Saturday. All these players are not part of the ongoing One-Dayers against New Zealand. Two players — Harshit Rana and Kuldeep Yadav — who are part of the ODI squad will join the Indian T20 team in Nagpur after the last ODI to be played on Sunday at Indore.

 

“Around 10-12 cricketers and support staff of Indian team will be reaching Nagpur on Saturday by evening flights,” said a VCA official. Players like skipper Yadav, Abhishek Sharma, Hardik Pandya, hard hitting batter Shivam Dube, all-rounder Axar Patel, Rinku Singh, spinner Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, wicketkeeper Ishan Kishan will be reaching the city well in advance. Tilak Varma has been ruled out of the first three T20Is due to injury. The players will hit the nets on Sunday morning. The New Zealand team will reach the city on Monday morning. They will practice on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the online sale of tickets for the first match will begin on Saturday.

 

The online sale of tickets will be through official ticketing partner via their mobile application ‘District by Zomato’ and also through their official website ‘district.in’. The sale will commence from 10:00 am onwards. Each person shall be entitled to book up to a maximum of two (2) tickets only linked to one (1) mobile number and one (1) Email ID. The tickets booked online can be redeemed from January 18 till January 20 from 9.30 am to 8.00 pm at the Bilimoria Hall, Civil Lines, Nagpur, informed a VCA media release. “On match day, tickets can be redeemed at VCA Civil Lines till 2 pm,” informed VCA CEO Farokh Dastoor. There will be no ticket redemption counter at Jamtha.

 

“There will be around 37,000 tickets up for grabs. The VCA has sold around 4000 tickets to its members and affiliated clubs and a few complementary tickets are reserved for BCCI and State Associations,” stated Dastoor. VCA has appealed spectators to use bus service and Metro to avoid traffic congestion. “We will be plying 30 NMC busses apart from our own 15 buses on the match day for pick and drop facility from Khapri Metro Station to Jamtha Stadium to ease out traffic congestion. It would be advisable to public ‘car pool ’ to reach the stadium,” stated Dastoor.