Team India for Australia tour announced; Rohit Sharma excluded, Rahul named Vice-Captain

Ahead of the two-month-long tour of Australia, the BCCI on Monday announced Team India squads for the limited-overs and Test series. Limited-overs Vice-Captain Rohit Sharma has been excluded from the squads and will miss the much-anticipated tour after sustaining an injury during the ongoing IPL season in UAE. Punjab skipper KL Rahul has been named Vice-captain of the side for the limited-overs series. 

Architect-turned-cricketer Varun Chakravarthy, who has impressed as a spinner in the ongoing IPL season, has earned his maiden T20 call-up. Other notable inclusions in the T20 team include Sanju Samson, Manish Pandey, Washington Sundar and Deepak Chahar. The ODI squad announced is more or less similar to the T20 squad with additional inclusion of Shubman Gill in the team. 

The selectors have decided to go with Navdeep Saini, Mohammad Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami as the team's pace battery in the Tests. Ajinkya Rahane will assume his role as the vice-captain for the Tests while Wriddhiman Saha will don the wicketkeeping duties. Mayank Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw are slated to be the openers for the side touring Australia. 

Here are the squads: 

Ravi Shastri enters bio-bubble

India head coach Ravi Shastri and his support staff have all arrived in Dubai and entered the bio-bubble as they get ready for the team’s two-month tour of Australia next month. Shastri, batting coach Vikram Rathour, bowling coach Bharath Arun and fielding coach R Sridhar have all reached from their respective home cities on Sunday.

“The head coach and his team arrived yesterday. They are now in isolation and getting their three mandatory RT-PCR tests done. There is a separate bio-bubble created for the support staff along with Cheteshwar Pujara and Hanuma Vihari,” a senior BCCI source privy to the development told d PTI on conditions of anonymity.

India Tour of Australia 2020

India will be touring Australia for a four-match Test series that gets underway on December 3. The first Test will be played at the Gabba in Brisbane.  The second Test match at the Adelaide Oval will be a Day-Night affair while the last two matches will be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Sydney Cricket Ground respectively.

The schedule confirms India's tour of Australia for a three-match T20 series in October and the four-match test series in December-January. The second test of the series between December 11 and December 15 is set to be a Day/Night Test at the Adelaide Oval. The Test series will be followed by a three-match ODI series as well.