By Admin 
Chennai: Abhimanyu Easwaran will lead the India-A squad for the two tour games against England Lions starting on May 30 and the intra-team match against the senior team ahead of India’s five-match Test series against England next month.
Meanwhile, Shubman Gill, one of the contenders for the Test captaincy following Rohit Sharma’s retirement and his Gujarat Titans teammate B. Sai Sudharsan will be available from the second match.
As expected, the selectors have included Karun Nair, who last played a Test for India in 2017, following a stellar domestic season. Karun scored 863 runs for Vidarbha and was a key architect of his side winning the Ranji Trophy, which included centuries in the quarterfinal and the summit clash.
Left-arm spinner Harsh Dubey, another key member of Vidarbha’s title-winning set-up, has also been rewarded for his record-breaking performance in the country’s premier domestic tournament, in which he scalped 69 wickets, the most by a bowler in a single season.
The squad for the tour games includes Test regulars and players whose IPL teams have been eliminated from the competition. However, it could be tricky for the likes of Karun, Shardul Thakur, Harshit Rana, Akash Deep, and Mukesh Kumar, whose teams are in the hunt for the Playoffs. It remains to be seen if they travel to England if their respective teams make it to the top-four.
India-A squad: Abhimanyu Easwaran (Capt.), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Karun Nair, Dhruv Jurel (v-c) (wk), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Shardul Thakur, Ishan Kishan (wk), Manav Suthar, Tanush Kotian, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Harshit Rana, Anshul Kamboj, Khaleel Ahmed, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Sarfaraz Khan, Tushar Deshpande, Harsh Dubey
The schedule: May 30-June 2: vs England Lions (Canterbury); June 6-9: vs England Lions (Northampton); June 13-16: India ‘A’ vs India (Beckenham)
Published – May 16, 2025 10:32 pm IST