India’s Test vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane will be captaining Mumbai 20-man strong squad during the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament, which will kick-off the senior men’s 2021-22 Indian domestic season this winter (November 4-22).
Young gun Prithvi Shaw has been appointed Rahane’s deputy in the absence of Suryakumar Yadav. The latter is currently part of India’s T20 World Cup in the United Arabic Emirates and is expected to be selected for the home T20I series against New Zealand in mid-November.
The squad also features talented Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sarfaraz Khan. While the former is expected to shoulder the top-order responsibilities with Shaw, the latter will be batting in the middle-order.
Jaiswal had a very fruitful second Indian Premier League season with Rajasthan Royals recently. The solid-looking young left-hander showed an expanded range to his game, ending the tournament with 249 runs at a strike-rate of 148.21.
Mumbai have got a great mix of youth and experience in their ranks and will be hoping to perform better in the SMAT than last season when they managed only a solitary win out of their five games against Haryana, Kerala, Delhi, Puducherry, and Andhra Pradesh.
This time, they will be opening up their campaign with an Elite Group B fixture on November 4 against fellow Indian cricket giants Karnataka.
Quite a few of the names within the Mumbai side, including Shaw, Jaiswal and Sarfaraz, will be hoping to impress the selectors and potentially enter India’s T20I set-up one year ahead of the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
