With India’s tour of South Africa right around the corner, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have selected their 18-member squad for the tour. In a surprise move, the BCCI have announced that going forward Rohit Sharma will lead Team India in the ODI and T20I formats.
The tour will have three Test matches followed by three ODIs. The three-Test matches were scheduled to start December 17, however, after considering the risks and health of the players on priority because of the ‘Omicron’ COVID-19 variant, the BCCI decided to postpone the tour to start from December 26, 2021, till January 15, 2022.
Virat Kohli will be the captain for the Test matches with Rohit Sharma as his deputy. But in a surprise move, Rohit Sharma was named the captain of the three-match ODI series ahead of Virat Kohli. It is unknown whether it is because Kohli is being rested or whether it was a strategical move after the Test skipper had announced he will be giving up his captaincy for the T20 national team and Royal Challengers Bangalore captaincy as well to concentrate more on ODI and Test as well as his performances. The ODI squad has not been announced yet by the BCCI.
Test Squad:
Virat Kohli (Captain), Rohit Sharma(VC), KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Jayant Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj
Stand by players: Navdeep Saini, Saurabh Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Arzan Nagwaswalla.
