India will gear up for a unique ‘away’ series at home next week, as Afghanistan will host three T20Is at Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi.

With an Asian Games gold medal defence also slated for late September, the senior selection committee named a full-strength T20I squad led by Shreyas Iyer. The announcement also marked Sanju Samson’s return to the fold. The Kerala wicket-keeper was dropped for India’s tour to Zimbabwe, following the twin series defeats in Ireland and England in July.

Samson’s return will pose questions again over India’s preferred opening combination after the team management opted for multiple opening pairs in recent tours. Samson was briefly dropped during the England series, breaking his pairing with Abhishek Sharma for the highly anticipated debut of teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. While the 15-year-old made scores of 14, 13 and 15 in three games, he made a sharp turnaround in the Zimbabwe tour. As India blanked the hosts 3-0, Sooryavanshi emerged as the highest run-getter, plundering two half-centuries, including a 49-ball 81.

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Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta, however, said that India are likely to retain their World Cup-winning combination of Samson and Abhishek in the Afghanistan series.

“Straight away, if you think about the last match (England T20Is), it was Sanju and Abhishek. Leave Zimbabwe aside. When all three were available, Sanju and Abhishek were there. I think we haven’t seen the Sanju-Vaibhav combination yet. So far, we’ve seen Abhishek-Vaibhav and Abhishek-Sanju, right? It’s not a bad idea to even try and see what kind of combination Sanju and Vaibhav can make,” Dasgupta said on his YouTube channel.

“Again, I’m not saying, please don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about dropping anyone here. I’m just saying, reiterating again, that the idea is that before the World Cup, you want to give every combination and every individual a proper chance and proper game time to understand what works,” he added.

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India are currently ranked No. 1 in the T20I format and Dasgupta said that the team will incorporate a lot of changes across series in the forthcoming months as they build towards next the World Cup in 2028.

“That’s why I’m saying that when it comes to T20 cricket, I was reading some articles where I saw people saying, ‘You know, this guy is back and this guy is back again.’ But in T20 cricket, over the next six to eight months, nobody is back and nobody is sacked. According to me, there are 20-25 players who will play in rotation. Some will be back, while some will be left out. But the idea is that two to three months before a tournament, like the World Cup, you get a proper team,” he added.