ROHIT DROPPED FROM TESTS
BCCI announces squads for one-off Afghan Test match; Ireland and England series
BENGALURU: Virat Kohli's much-hyped county stint paved the way for Karun Nair's comeback while senior batsman Rohit Sharma was dropped from the 15-strong Indian squad announced on Tuesday for the historic oneoff Test against Afghanistan next month.
Vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane will expectedly lead the team in Kohli's absence, the selection committee led by MSK Prasad announced after a meeting in which multiple squads were picked.
Rahane, however, has been dropped from the ODI squad for England tour. He was part of India's 50-over squad during the South Africa tour.
Ambati Rayudu and KL Rahul were notable comebacks in the ODI squad for the England tour while young speedster Siddarth Kaul was rewarded with a T20 berth against Ireland and England for his consistent IPL performance.
The highlight of today's selection was without doubt India's second ever Test triple centurion Nair, who is making a comeback after 14 months in the wilderness, and it remains to be seen if he makes the playing XI against the Afghans in the match starting June 14.
However, Kohli has been named as captain for the twomatch T20 series against Ireland. Interestingly, Surrey had officially announced that Kohli will be available for the entire month of June, but the two T20 Internationals are scheduled on June 27 and 29. Surrey's county game against Yorkshire at Scarborough is scheduled from June 25-28.
"Except Virat, all the Test specialists are playing. He is going for a cause as he wants to come well prepared for the England Test series. It is always good that he goes there and performs well. He is very keen to do extremely well in english condition. It is a great opportunity for us to win the series," chairman of selectors Prasad said at a media conference.
The 26-year-old Nair has scored 612 runs for Karnataka in the last Ranji Trophy with three hundreds. Incidentally, the last Test match that he played was against Australia at Dharamasala in March, last year. Ironically, it was Kohli, who had missed the Test match then due to a shoulder injury.
Nair has played six Test matches, scoring 374 runs, but after his 303 against England at Chennai, his sequence of scores read 26, 0, 23 and 5, leading to his exclusion. However, it is highly unlikely that Nair will get a lookin in the playing XI against Afghanistan.
For the 31-year-old Rohit, an aggregate of 78 runs in 4 innings with a highest score of 47 during the South Africa series, is the reason for his exclusion from the Test squad.
Pacers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah have been rested as they are expected to shoulder the workload during the limited overs leg in UK before the bigticket Test series in August.pti