Ishan Kishan will be playing in front of his home crowd in Ranchi in 1st T20I vs New Zealand.
India has already won the ODI series 3-0 and will now play the T20Is under the captaincy of Hardik Pandya, who led India to a 2-1 series win in T20Is over Sri Lanka recently.
However, the focus will be 24-year-old Kishan who made his debut for the team in 2021 and most recently hogged the limelight for scoring the fastest double-century in ODIs when he made 210 against Bangladesh in just 131 balls.
Now with Rishabh Pant out of contention due to his accident and KL Rahul on a break, Kishan got the opportunity to play regularly for India and though he didn’t have a very good ODI series, he will be eager to solidify his spot in the Indian T20I team.
And what better place to do it than in front of his home town where he last played on October 9, 2022, against South Africa, during the second ODI of the series. In that match, he scored 93 runs from 84 balls.
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In a video posted by the BCCI's official Twitter handle ahead of the series opener against New Zealand, Ishan spoke about many previously unheard topics. One of the topics was his most memorable moment and for Ishan Kishan, it was getting an autograph from his idol MS Dhoni when he was just 18 years old.
"The one time I asked for an autograph was from MS Dhoni. When I was 18 years old and I finally saw him for the first time. It was a very memorable moment for me, and it still is. And I am proud to have his autograph on my bat," he said.
According to Ishan, Dhoni has been his role model since childhood because they are both from the same place and are wicketkeeper-batsmen, and he would like to fill his shoes.
"My cricketing idol while growing up was MS Dhoni, who came from the same place and also played for Jharkhand, so I really wanted to fill his shoes, and now that I am here, I will make sure that I make my team win so many other games," he added.
Here is the video: