With Virat Kohli and Co. staying in UK for the upcoming five-match Test series against England, a completely different Indian team was picked by the selectors for the upcoming white-ball tour of Sri Lanka. This new Indian team led by Shikhar Dhawan consists of a perfect mixture of youngsters and experienced players.

The former Sri Lanka batsman Russel Arnold in his recent interaction with Hindustan Times, named the players to watch out for in the upcoming limited-overs fixtures between India and Sri Lanka.

“For Sri Lanka, I will go with Avishka Fernando at the top of the order. Let me go outside the box with India. Of course, you will be looking at Dhawan and Pandyas to perform but I’m thinking Prithvi Shaw might get a run. Helpfully he will prove me right by entertaining everyone,” Arnold said.

"If Virat Kohli watches 'The Hundred' and he likes it, he will say so" - Dinesh Karthik

While there was a lot of talk about India sending a team with a lot of senior pros like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Japrit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant, and Mohammad Shami missing, the former Sri Lanka cricketer said he was jealous that India have all these young cricketers to back their big stars.

“I just feel jealous that India have those cricketers. Even this team, we’ve seen them play. We’ve seen the quality they bring. There is a lot of experience too in Shikhar Dhawan, the Pandyas, spinners Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. There’s a lot of exciting prospects,” the cricketer-turned-commentator told Hindustan Times.

The Indian team scheduled to take on Sri Lanka consists of as many as six uncapped cricketers – Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Nitish Rana, K Gowtham, Varun Chakravarthy, and Chetan Sakariya.

With the three-match ODI series scheduled to begin from 18 July followed by a three-T20I series from 25 July, it will be interesting to see how the Men in Blue perform against hosts Sri Lanka.

(With Hindustan Times Inputs)