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The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Saturday, May 24 announced India’s 18-member squad for the highly-anticipated five-match Test series against England. The announcement came seeing the series less than a month away from start as it is scheduled to commence on June 20, with the final Test set to be played from July 31 to August 4.
Notably, the upcoming five-match Test series will commence the new World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, running from 2025 till 2027. With this, the Men in Blue are expected to see a full-blown transition in form of a new skipper, a set of fresh middle-order batters and a comparatively young pace attack after three veterans of the game, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravichandran Ashwin announced retirement from Test cricket.
Shubman Gill to lead India; Rishabh Pant named his deputy
The Indian team will be led by young Indian opener Shubman Gill, who steps in the shoes of Rohit Sharma after the latter announced retirement from Test cricket, earlier this month and Rishabh Pant will serve as his deputy. The decision from the selection committee comes after Jasprit Bumrah had reportedly informed the Indian cricket board to not take on the leadership role due to his long-term fitness and workload management. With Gill now at the helm, Shubman Gill will become India's fourth youngest captain, aged 25 years and 258 days at the start of the series.
Speaking of the series, Team India will first take on India A in a four-day warm-up match at the Kent County Cricket Ground from June 13 to June 16. The Men in Blue will then kickstart the highly-anticipated Test series with the first Test set to be played from June 20 to 24 at the Headingley, Leeds. The action will then move to Edgbaston for the second Test, set to be played from July 2 to 6, followed by the third and fourth Test set to be played at Lord’s and Emirates Old Trafford, respectively. The fifth and final Test will be played at the Kennington Oval in London from July 31 till August 4.
India squad for England Test series
Shubman Gill (Captain), Rishabh Pant (VC, wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav.
