Veteran India batter Ajinkya Rahane has returned in whites after 16 months as the BCCI on Tuesday announced a 15-man squad for the upcoming World Test Championship (WTC) final against Australia. The much-anticipated encounter is scheduled to get underway at The Oval in England from June 7, 2023.
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Rahane, who played his last Test for India in January 2022 in South Africa, stormed back into the Test team on the back of a superb domestic season. At the same time, KL Rahul also comes back into the mix while the likes of Umesh Yadav and Jaydev Unadkat have managed to retain their spots.
The Mumbai captain amassed over 600 runs in 11 innings, including a double century against Hyderabad and a ravishing 191 against Assam. Rahane continued his purple patch in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 and has already scored a couple of fifties for Chennai Super Kings. He has scored 209 runs in just five innings for CSK at a staggering strike rate of 199.05
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Apart from his sublime form, the selectors zeroed in on Rahane due to the unavailability of middle-order batter Shreyas Iyer and wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant.
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Iyer has recently undergone back surgery and is expected to be out of action for a few months. Pant, on other hand, has started is currently recovering from the injuries he suffered in a car crash in December last year.
Another surprising inclusion is of out-of-form KL Rahul. He featured in the first two Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as the vice-captain of the side but was eventually dropped from the playing XI following a series of poor knocks.
The presence of Shubman Gill in the squad suggests that Rahul is likely not to open the innings and might go down the order as designated keeper-batter KS Bharat may find it difficult to find a place in the XI due to his vulnerabilities with the bat.
The spin-bowling all-rounders Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Axar Patel have retained their spots. However, it is highly unlikely that the three of them will play together.
Given the English conditions, the presence of Shardul Thakur also gives India an option to play a bowling all-rounder instead of having two spin options in the line-up.
India’s Test squad WTC final: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, K L Rahul, KS Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Mohd. Shami, Mohd. Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat.
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