It has been a long season for India since Champions Trophy 2017. Dhawan due to his power packed performances back to back in all formats made his opening position fixed on the side. Taking over West Indies and then whitewashing Sri Lanka. Ahead of this now India has a long home season starting with Australia in a five match series followed by New Zealand and South Africa later.

According to recent reports from BCCI, Shikhar Dhawan has requested to be released from India’s squad for the first three of five One-Day Internationals against Australia to attend to his unwell wife. The board will be looking for a replacement for him which is yet to be announced.

Dhawan has been in a great form this season. He got the most runs in the Test series in Sri Lanka with 358 in four innings at 89.50, earning him the award for the Man of the Series. He also scored a 132 in the opening one-dayer of the five-match series. Though he missed the last ODI and the lone T20I  due to his mother’s health.

India will play three ODIs and two T20I against Australia that would kick start from 17th September at Chennai. Ravichandran Ashwin and Jadeja to have been rested and Yuvraj Singh has missed making the cut into the playing XI. Mostly KL Rahul might get a chance to open with Rohit Sharma in Dhawan’s absence.

India squad for first 3 ODIs: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Ajinkya Rahane, MS Dhoni (wk), Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami.