Melbourne. Experienced batsman KL Rahul and wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel have been included in the India A squad for the second fourday match against Australia A starting on Thursday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
had reported on Monday that Rahul and Jurel will join the India A team after leaving for Melbourne after the third Test against New Zealand, in which the Rohit Sharmaled side lost by 25 runs and suffered a historic 30 defeat. Had to do.
Sources also said that the decision to send Rahul and Jurel to play for the India A team was aimed at giving both of them some match time ahead of the allimportant BorderGavaskar Trophy series starting in Perth from November 22. Was. It is also believed that Rahul could open with Abhimanyu Easwaran, as the Indian team will be keen to see who will be the best man to pair with Yashasvi Jaiswal in the Perth Test.
The vacancy at the top position comes especially after captain Rohit Sharma said at the end of the Mumbai Test that he might be unavailable for the series opener in Perth due to personal reasons.
Easwaran has scored 27 centuries in 100 firstclass matches at an average of 49.40, while Rahul has recently batted mainly in the middle order, but with the fact that he has scored Test centuries in England, South Africa and Australia, The country in which he made his Test debut in 2014.
Rahul played three Tests in the Indian domestic season, with his last match coming in the hosts' series opener against New Zealand at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. After scoring scores of 0 and 12 in that match, which India lost by eight wickets, he did not play in the remaining matches of the series.
On the other hand, Jurel can take the responsibility of wicketkeeping from Ishan Kishan, who is captaining India A. Jurel did not get a chance to play in the five Test matches played by India at home, although he got a chance to play as a substitute wicketkeeper in the first Test in Bengaluru after Rishabh Pant suffered a knee injury.
Earlier, Prasidh Krishna was included in the India A squad in place of Yash Dayal, who was included in India's T20 squad for the fourmatch tour of South Africa starting in Durban from November 8.
In the first fourday match, India A, captained by Ruturaj Gaikwad, suffered a crushing sevenwicket defeat at the Great Barrier Reef Arena in Mackay, Queensland, with lefthanded batsman B. Along with Sai Sudarshan and Devdutt Padikkal, fast bowler Mukesh Kumar performed well.
India A squad for the second firstclass match: Ruturaj Gaikwad (captain), Abhimanyu Easwaran (vicecaptain), Sai Sudarshan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Devdutt Padikkal, Ricky Bhui, Baba Inderjit, Ishan Kishan (wk), Abhishek Porel (wk), Mukesh Kumar, Khalil Ahmed, Navdeep Saini, Manav Suthar, Tanush Kotian, Prasidh Krishna, KL Rahul, Dhruv Jurel (wicketkeeper)
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Image Credit: KhasKhabar.