India’s Test squad announced for first two matches of 5-match series against England

India’s test squad for the first two matches are announced for the England tour. The teams are set to play the first test series of the year which is a 5-match series in India. Matches will start from January 25 at Hyderabad. The team declared has quite a lot of surprise elements starting from the selection of Dhruv Jurel. Along with him, the inclusion of Avesh Khan instead of Prasidh Krishna is a big surprise from the selectors. Additionally, Shardul Thakur was dropped from the side for the upcoming two tests.

This time, the selectors have included Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav in the test squad after dropping them from South Africa’s tour. India has three keepers in the squad including KL Rahul, KS Bharat and Dhruv Jurel. Ishan Kishan misses out due to personal reasons. However, the selectors are hoping for him to return soon.

Along with extra keepers, India is also going with four spinners and pacers. As Rohit Sharma is captaining the side, the selectors have shown their trust in Jasprit Bumrah. The pace bowler is the vice-captain for the first two matches. Apart from this, the test squad seems fine on paper. Nonetheless, it will be exciting to see them perform in the match.

England to come to India before three days of the first match 

England team will be travelling to India for the test series just three days before the match date. For this decision, the team is being heavily criticized by former cricketers. Mark Butcher, the English cricketer, while having a conversation on Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast mentioned the fact that the team is being over-confident and playing in India without enough practice might be dangerous for the team. The players will take time to adjust to the environment and arriving a couple of days earlier sounds extremely risky.

Butcher said, “Frankly, I’d be a little bit terrified if I was playing. Most of the guys haven’t played any long-form cricket since July. Very few of the squad were involved a great deal in the rundown of the County Championship, which finished at the back end of September. We’re now three months down the road with nobody having had any sort of middle practice at all.”