The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday announced Ajinkya Rahane as the captain for India’s squad that is to host Afghanistan in a historic one-off Test at Bengaluru in June.
The regular skipper Virat Kohli will miss the game following his commitments in the County Championship for Surrey in the same month. Also, Shardul Thakur has earned a maiden call-up in the longest format of the game after impressive showings in the ODIs and T20Is.
The spin tweakers in Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja continue to be part of the team in whites as Kuldeep Yadav has also been included to assist the duo.
The likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah are not included in the squad for the game against Afghanistan which will be played on June 14 at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
However, Karun Nair has been rewarded after shining in the domestic season for Karnataka and will be itching to restart his international career. He was dropped from the team unfortunately despite scoring a heroic triple century against England.
Here’s the complete squad:
Ajinkya Rahane (c), Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Karun Nair, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Hardik Pandya, Ishant Sharma, Shardul Thakur
