One major omission from India’s England Test series squad was seamer Mohammed Shami, who was not considered fit enough for the prolonged series. Shubman Gill was on Saturday named India’s new Test captain with Rishabh Pant being made his deputy, ahead of the five-match series in England.
The selectors’ choice of team leadership was on expected lines after the retirement of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. Young left-hander B Sai Sudharsan got his first-ever Test call-up.
The team also includes Karun Nair, who comes back to the national setup after seven years. One significant omission was pacer Mohammed Shami, who was not considered fit enough for the long series. “We have had Shubman under scanner last year or so (for leadership).
We are confident he is the man who is going (to lead the team forward). It is big job pressure but he is an excellent player. We want all the best for him,” said chief selector Ajit Agarkar while announcing the squad. On Shami, he said: “His workload is not where it should be. We were hoping that he would be available but it is unfortunate. He is not fully fit right now. From the Australia tour, Harshit Rana and Sarfaraz Khan are dropped.
Agarkar also made public the choice to nominate Gill as the next captain. We’ve talked about every available option, over the past year or so, we’ve considered Shubman at different times. Taken a lot of feedback from the dressing room. Very young, but there’s been improvement.”
We’re hoping he’s the man. He’s a great player, our good wishes with him. You don’t select captains for one tour or two tours. We’ve noticed some improvement in the last year or two with him. No doubt it’s going to be as challenging as it can be,” Agarkar stated
Squad: Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal, K L Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh and Kuldeep Yadav.
