With more than a month left for India’s next assignment in international cricket, BCCI has started preparations for crucial summer in England. On Friday, BCCI announced 24 member squad for the World Test Championship final against New Zealand and also for the series against England.
After the suspension of IPL 2021, Team India will go for a long tour of England where they will play the World Test Championship and five-match Test series against England. The WTC final is on June 18, while the test series against England will begin on August 5 and end in the second week of September.
The first test would be played in Nottingham on 5th August and then the second test would start from 12th August which is going to be played at the Lord’s, London. Third in Leeds and the fourth test would be played in The Oval, London. The final test would be played in Manchester on 10th September.Â
India has a full-strength squad available for these two important assignments. Since Hardik Pandya is not yet completely fit to bowl in Test cricket, he is not part of the squad. T.Natarjan missed out due to injury, while Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep Yadav were other high-profile absentees from the squad. There are 20 players in the main squad, while four players are on the standby list. KL Rahul and Wriddhiman Saha will be part of the main squad provided they are fit by the time of departure. Rahul recently underwent surgery for acute appendicitis, while Saha was tested positive for covid-19 during IPL 2021. BCCI also decided against calling Devdutt Padikkal and Prithvi Shaw despite their good form in domestic cricket and IPL 2021.
Squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-capt), Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Umesh Yadav, KL Rahul, Wriddhiman Saha
Standby players: Abhimanyu Easwaran, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan, Arzan Nagwaswalla