Duleep Trophy squads and schedule announcedÂ
The squads for the prestigious Duleep Trophy were announced earlier today with 45 cricketers across the country taking part in the tournament which will take place from September 7 to 29.
The tournament was initially scrapped this year by a senior BCCI official but was brought back by former Indian captain and chairman of the technical committee of the CoA - Sourav Ganguly.
Apparently, the tournament was scrapped without his knowledge and Ganguly was firm in his stance of re-instating it using pink balls once again.
"I am reading in the media that Duleep Trophy has not or may not take place this season. I don't know that's true or not but if you remember, the members of the technical committee had agreed to use pink balls again for the Duleep matches and the tournament was supposed to be held in the same format as last year," wrote Ganguly to Sridhar in an email accessed by the PTI.
The tournament which began way back in the 1961-62 season consists of teams which represent different geographical zones of India.
The three teams which take part in the tournament are India Red, India Green, and Indie Blue, the latter who are the defending champions.
Indian cricketers Abhinav Mukund, Parthiv Patel, and Suresh Raina were named the captains of India Red, Green, and Blue respectively.
A lot of youngsters have been included in the squads as well with each team having a fair share of the young prodigies who have been creating great strides with their performances in the domestic and international circuit.
India Red have included Rishabh Pant in their side. Pant made his debut for the Indian T20 and ODI side earlier this year. They have also included other youngsters such as Ishank Jaggi, Basil Thampi, and Karn Sharma. They will also have the experience of Dinesh Karthik and Ambati Rayudu.
India Green have included extremely talented youngsters in the form of Shreyas Iyer, Ravikumar Samarth, and Mohammed Siraj in their side. The experienced ones include Murali Vijay and Karun Nair.
India Blue, on the other hand, have included youngsters such as Ishan Kishan and Kaushik Gandhi with the ever experienced Suresh Raina captaining the side.
The fixtures will take place in Lucknow and Kanpur, with the former hosting the final between September 25-29.
Here are the squads:
India Red: Abhinav Mukund (captain), Priyank Panchal, Sudip Chatterjee, Ishank Jaggi, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Karthik, Rishabh Pant (wk), Baba Indrajith, K Gowtham, Karn Sharma, Basil Thampi, Dhawal Kulkarni, Ashok Dinda, Rahul Singh, CV Milind.
India Green: Murali Vijay, R Samarth, P Chopra, Shreyas Iyer, Karun Nair, Ankit Bawne, Parthiv Patel (C and wk), Shahbaz Nadeem, Parvez Rasool, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj, Sidharth Kaul, Mayank Dagar, Nitin Saini, Aniket Choudhary.
India Blue: Suresh Raina (captain), Samit Gohel, KS Bharat, AR Easwaran, Manoj Tiwary, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar, Ishan Kishan (wk), Jayant Yadav, Bharghav Bhatt, KM Gandhi, Ishant Sharma, Ankit Rajpoot, S Kamat, Jaydev Unadkat.
Here is the schedule:
