India’s top rated and currently world’s most lethal bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, has finally not made into the 15’s for the upcoming Champions Trophy. Harshit Rana has got his name as his replacement.
Bumrah who got a back injury during the Border-Gavaskar test series was expected to make his cut into the team in the knockout round as due to some reports he was expected to miss the group stage matches. But it is expected that he might not get fully fit before the tournament and this might create problems for the team in the tournament.
This will be the 2nd time when he will not be part of the team due to injury in the ICC tournament. Earlier he missed the 2022 T20 World Cup.
Yashasvi Jaiswal who was earlier included in the 15 members list has been removed from the list and spinner Varun Chakravarthy made it into the list. Chakravarthy has shown brilliant performances in the T20 matches due to which he got his maiden ODI match against the ongoing England series where he broke the opening partnership of Phil Salt and Ben Duckett by taking the wicket of Salt in Cuttack.
Rana was earlier named as a backup for Jasprit who was in strong contention along with Mohammad Siraj. But Siraj alongwith Shivam Dube and Yashasvi Jaiswal will be the travelling reserves for the team and they only travel when there will be any injury occurred during the tournament otherwise they will remain in India.
India is in Group A along with Bangladesh, Pakistan and New Zealand. Their first match will be against Bangladesh on February 20.
Updated India squad:
Rohit Sharma ©, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Axar Patel, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Mohammad Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Rishabh Pant.
Varun’s profile credit: ESPNcricinfo.com