Karnataka boys Manish Pandey, Karun Nair to lead India A teams in South Africa
New Delhi: Senior team players Karun Nair and Manish Pandey were today named skippers of India A's unofficial Test and one-day teams respectively, for the upcoming tour of South Africa.
India A will play a one-day tri-series involving Australia A and South Africa A followed by two four-day matches against the hosts. The tour starts with the first one-dayer of the triangular series in Groenkloof on July 26 between India A and Australia A.
Karun and Jayant Yadav are two current India players who are in both the squads, while Pandey needed to be checked after coming from an injury. The squad for the one-day series is packed with IPL and domestic limited-overs (Vijay Hazare Trophy) performers such as Krunal Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Basil Thampi, Mohammad Shiraj and Siddharth Kaul.
On the other hand, the team for the four-day (first class) matches is full of Ranji Trophy performers such as Priyank Panchal, the top-scorer in the season gone by, Ishan Kishan, Sudeep Chatterjee, Ankit Bawne and Shahbaz Nadeem. Also part of the first class squad is senior India fringe player Abhinav Mukund.
Since India's tour of Sri Lanka also starts on July 26, it is a given that Nair won't be a part of the senior squad for the Test series. Nair, who had started his Test career with a triple century on debut in the last home season, has since been going through a bad run of form, including in the Indian Premier League where he led Delhi Daredevils in some of the matches in the absence of regular skipper Zaheer Khan.
One-day sqaud:
Mandeep Singh, Shreyas Iyer, Sanju Samson, Manish Pandey (captain), Deepak Hooda, Karun Nair, Krunal Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Vijay Shankar, Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jayant Yadav, Basil Thampi, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Siddarth Kaul.
Sqaud for four-day matches:
Priyank Panchal Abhinav Mukund, Shreyas Iyer, Ankit Bawne, Karun Nair (Captain), Sudip Chatterjee, Ishan Kishan (wk), Hanuma Vihari, Jayant Yadav, Shahbaz Nadeem, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Aniket Choudhary, Ankit Rajpoot.
Fixtures:
1st one-dayer - India A vs Australia A - July 26
2nd one-dayer - South Africa A vs India A - July 28
3rd one-dayer - South Africa A vs Australia A - July 30
4th one-dayer - India A vs Australia A - August 1
5th one-dayer - South Africa A vs India A - August 3
6th one-dayer - South Africa A vs Australia A - August 5
Final - August 8
1st four-day match - South Africa A vs India A - August 12-15
2nd four-day match - South Africa A vs India A - August 19-22.
