Kolkata: India have named uncapped players Abhimanyu Easwaran, Harshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy for the five-Test tour of Australia starting on November 22. Mohammed Shami, who had last played the ODI World Cup final in Ahmedabad on 19 November 2023, hasn’t made the squad after failing to recover from an ankle surgery. Other prominent names not making the cut are spinners Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, the latter nursing a ‘chronic left groin issue’, according to the BCCI statement released late on Friday. No update was given on Shami.
With Sharma reportedly likely to miss one of the first two Tests for personal reasons, it’s highly possible that Easwaran—rewarded for his consistent domestic form—could make his debut on this tour. KL Rahul has been selected as pure batter, with Dhruv Jurel named as second wicketkeeper after Rishabh Pant. Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill and Sarfaraz Khan are the other specialist batters.
It remains to be seen who shares the new ball with Bumrah, who has been named vice-captain on this tour. Mohammed Siraj has seniority over Akash Deep but his recent lean patch has prompted the selectors to go with Akash in the ongoing Pune Test. That the management was keen on loading the Australia bound squad with fast bowlers was evident in the way Rohit Sharma had called for expanding the reserves pool before the Bengaluru Test against New Zealand.
“We want to create a bench strength where tomorrow if anything happens to anyone, we are not worried, and we don’t want to be worried or too heavily reliant on a few individuals. That’s not the right thing to do,” Sharma had said. “We want to look at the future at the same time, try and make sure that we get the right guys in as well.”
It’s in line with that vision that the selectors have not only added Rana and Krishna—who barely bowled in only one Ranji Trophy match for Karnataka this season—but also named pacers Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed as travelling reserves. Rana and Reddy are already travelling as reserves for the current tour. Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar are the spinners.
India are holders of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, having won their two previous tours of Australia by identical margins of 2-1 in 2018-19 and 2020-21. The first Test will be at Perth from November 22 to 26. Adelaide will host the second Test, a day-night fixture, from December 6 to 10. The third Test in Brisbane is from December 14 to 18, followed by the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne from December 26 and the New Year’s Test in Sydney from January 3.
India’s T20I squad for SA
Karnataka seamer Vyshak Vijaykumar and Punjab batter Ramandeep Singh have been called up for the T20I tour of South Africa, beginning November 8. Missing the cut were Mayank Yadav, Shivam Dube and Riyan Parag for injury.
