Indian squad for West Indies tour announced
The BCCI on Friday announced a 16-member squad for the Test series against the West Indies starting on July 12. The captaincy of the team has been handed over to opener Rohit Sharma, while the vice-captain has been made to veteran Ajinkya Rahane. The ODI squad for the men in blue was also announced with Hardik Pandya named as the vice-captain
Rahane rewarded with Test vice-captaincy
Experienced batsman Ajinkya Rahane has got a big reward. Rahane, who recently performed well in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC Final-2023), will now play the role of vice-captain of the Test team. Ishan Kishan has been selected as the wicketkeeper in both the formats. With him KS Bharat in Test while Sanju Samson has got the responsibility as wicketkeeper in ODIs.
The most surprising name is that of Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara, who has been kept out of the team. Pujara was recently part of the team selected for the WTC final but his performance was very poor. He scored a total of 41 (27 and 14) runs in both the innings. In such a situation, the BCCI has left him out of the team and given a chance to young players like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rituraj Gaikwad.
Test squad: Rohit Sharma (captain), Shubman Gill, Rituraj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), KS Bharat (wicketkeeper), Ishan Kishan (wicketkeeper), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Mohammad Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat and Navdeep Saini.
ODI squad: Rohit Sharma (captain), Shubman Gill, Rituraj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson (wicketkeeper), Ishan Kishan (wicketkeeper), Hardik Pandya (vice-captain), Shardul Thakur, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammad Siraj, Umran Malik and Mukesh Kumar.
