The T20 World Cup 2021 will be over by this week. Although Team India had been eliminated a week ago in the group stages itself and have already returned home, New Zealand and Australia have qualified for the Finals and one of them will be winning the T20 title for the first time ever.
After it ends, New Zealand are set to travel to India directly for a long tour. The T20 team had been announced long back but now the Test team has been announced as well and some bold and shocking calls have been taken by the Indian selectors.
Let us first have a look at India’s squad for the Test series:
India’s Test squad: Ajinkya Rahane (captain for 1st Test), KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara (vice-captain), Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, Wriddhiman Saha (wicket-keeper), KS Bharat (wicket-keeper), Ravindra Jadeja, R. Ashwin, Axar Patel, Jayant Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna.
It must be noted that Ajinkya Rahane will remain the captain for only the first test following which Indian skipper Virat Kohli will join the team and thus fittingly take over the captaincy.
The two most important takeaways from this squad is first that Rohit Sharma has been rested after a tiresome T20 World Cup schedule. He will be the captain of India in the T20 series and thus it is a much deserved break for him.
But the second point is shocking indeed. Batsman Hanuma Vihari has been dropped from the team and he will instead be selected for India A. This is shocking as it was due to Vihari’s heroics that India won the Australia series as he had a big role to play in it altogether. No BCCI insider has given a reasoning for this decision so far. Netizens are completely baffled by this decision.