Rohit Sharma (left) replaced Virat Kohli as India's white ball captain: (AP Photo) India Squad for South Africa Series: The All India senior selection committee met on Wednesday and picked an 18-member squad for the Test series against South Africa. The selection committee headed by former Indian cricketer Chetan Sharma along with Debashish Mohanty and Abey Kuruvilla also announced the decision to name Rohit Sharma as the new ODI and T20I captain going forward. Rohit Sharma also replaces Ajinkya Rahane as India’s Test vice-captain.
India will be locking horns with South Africa in 3 Tests and 3 ODIs. There were speculations that India will not travel to South Africa amid the Omicron scare but BCCI has put an end to all the rumours and gave a green signal to the Indian tour of South Africa.
The Test team is as follows: Virat Kohli (Captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Jayant Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Mohd. Shami, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Md. Siraj.
Standby Players: Navdeep Saini, Saurabh Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Arzan Nagwaswalla.
One of the other major talking points from the meeting is the position of Rahane. According to PTI, Rahane has been able to hold on to his position in the side because Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli are not among the runs for a considerable period of time. “It would be grossly unfair to just target one player when two others have also been in equally horrendous form. Obviously Kohli is in a different league but for Rahane and Pujara, South Africa will be their last chance,” a senior BCCI official told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
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