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The Indian squad for the June 7-11 World Test Championship final against Australia was announced by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday. The return of veteran middle-order batter Ajinkya Rahane was the biggest takeaway from the squad announcement for the marquee event that will be held at The Oval, London. Some notable omissions from the squad that played in India’s most recent Test series against Australia were Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav and Ishan Kishan. The other aspect that struck everyone was that no vice-captain was named in the squad. Generally, when Indian cricket team tours abroad a vice-captain is generally named.
Most recently, India had named KL Rahul as the vice-captain for the first two Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia at home. Then, for the third and fourth Tests of the series no vice-captain was named. Rahul is part of the WC final squad. However, he has not been named the vice-captain.
According to a PTI report, Cheteshwar Pujara might be asked to take over the vice-captain’s duty. However, Twitter did not miss the development that no vice-captain was officially named for the WTC final.
No vice captain? https://t.co/LHhxXnEcJi
— Sahil 🇮🇳 (@Cric8_Expert) April 25, 2023
This is unfair though. Why is he not the captain or atleast vice captain.#CricketTwitter #wtcfinal https://t.co/Gq1Gl99LRH pic.twitter.com/Q7vG1EOZEd
— Mritunjay Dubey (@mddubey409) April 25, 2023
Why is the BCCI reluctant to name vice captain ?@BCCI pic.twitter.com/iNtB7uI3GD
— Jai Hind (@kannandelhi) April 25, 2023
Rahane’s comeback after 15 months was on predictable lines following Shreyas Iyer‘s back injury that ruled him out of the grand finale. Iyer recently underwent a surgery in the UK to treat stress fractures in his lower back.
That Rahane was in contention was reported by PTI in its report on April 10.
Rahane last played a Test in January, 2022 against South Africa in Cape Town.
His selection has more to do with carrying enough experienced batters in the line-up as Indian teams have had their share of struggles in SENA countries during one off games like these.
The 34-year-old, who led Mumbai during entire domestic season, scored nearly 700 runs but what stood out was how he has improved his attacking game in the IPL and is looking more purposeful than ever before with a strike-rate of 190 in seven games so far.
The rest of the squad led by Rohit Sharma was on predictable lines.
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
With PTI inputs
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