Navdeep Saini of Royal Challengers Bangalore impressed with his raw pace in the IPL 2019 season (File Photo)Navdeep Saini, a pacer from Delhi and Royal Challengers Bangalore who is known to consistently trouble batsmen with his pace and bounce, has joined the India squad in Manchester on Monday as an official net bowler.
Saini is the only net bowler with the Indian team currently, BCCI was quoted as saying by ANI.
Saini, along with Rishabh Pant and Ambati Rayudu, had been originally named as standby to the 15-man World Cup squad. However, he was unable to travel to England with the rest of the squad because of an injury he picked up in the IPL.
The move to draft Saini into the scheme of things could have been taken by the Indian team management in light of the injury to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who is set to miss the next few matches with a hamstring injury. He walked off the field in the Pakistan match and did not play against Afghanistan.
Deepak Chahar, Avesh Khan and Khaleel Ahmed had originally accompanied the Indian squad to England as net bowlers. While Chahar and Avesh returned to India in the first week of June, Khaleel has now left England to join the India A squad for the series against West Indies A.
Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah are expected to remain India’s frontline pace duo for the match against West Indies on Thursday.
