NEW DELHI: Veteran opener David Warner withdrew on Tuesday from Australia’s squad for the Twenty20 series in India following his exploits in their victorious ODI World Cup campaign. Australia defeated the hosts by six wickets in front of nearly 100,000 in Ahmedabad on Sunday to clinch their sixth one-day World Cup crown.

The two countries meet again in a five-match T20 series starting on Thursday in Visakhapatnam, but the 37-year-old Warner will not stay on after all. His withdrawal means just seven of Australia’s World Cup-winning one-day squad will remain in India for the series, among them Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell and Steve Smith.

All-rounder Aaron Hardie replaces Warner, who is gearing up to say farewell to Test cricket. “Selectors decided Warner would return home on the back of a successful yet demanding World Cup campaign,” Cricket Australia said in a statement.

Warner was Australia’s leading scorer at the World Cup with 535 runs at 48.63. For the hosts, Suryakumar Yadav will captain India for the first time in the absence of regular skipper Rohit Sharma. Just three of India’s World Cup squad will remain for the T20 series.

The open match in Visakhapatnam is followed by games in Thiruvananthapuram on November 26 and Guwahati on November 28. Shreyas Iyer will join the squad as vice-captain for the last two T20s, in Raipur on December 1 and in Bengaluru on December 5, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said.

India squad: Suryakumar Yadav (Capt), Ruturaj Gaikwad (vice-captain), Ishan Kishan, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar.

Australia squad: Matthew Wade (Capt), Aaron Hardie, Jason Behrendorff, Sean Abbott, Tim David, Nathan Ellis, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Glenn Maxwell, Tanveer Sangha, Matt Short, Steve Smith, Marcus Stoinis, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa.

Meanwhile, The International Cricket Council on Tuesday said it will trial stop clocks between overs in men’s one-day and T20 internationals in a bid to speed up the game. The move, approved after a meeting of the ICC board in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, will be put to the test from December to April.

If the bowling team is not ready to bowl the next over within 60 seconds of the previous over being completed, a five-run penalty will be imposed the third time it happens in an innings. “The clock will be used to regulate the amount of time taken between overs,” the ICC said in a statement.

Slow-over rates in limited-over cricket have been a perennial concern and last year the ICC introduced penalties in both men’s and women’s cricket. Currently, if the fielding team fails to start the final over by the stipulated time, they are docked one fielder from outside the 30-yard circle.

This is in addition to the fines teams have to pay for slow over-rates. Stop clocks are used in other sports including tennis in an effort to speed up games. The issue of speeding-up play in cricket hit the headlines after Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews became the first batsman to be dismissed “timed out” in an international match during the just-concluded World Cup.

Mathews was declared out after he failed to take strike within the stipulated time of two minutes during Sri Lanka’s group match against Bangladesh. Mathews attempted to argue he had a problem with his helmet strap, but the umpires had to uphold the decision when Bangladesh chose not to withdraw their appeal. – AFP