The All-India Senior Selection Committee has announced the three squads for the upcoming flurry of fixtures. Virat Kohli has been omitted from the solitary test against Afghanistan, with the captain set to take heed of his commitments in the English county for the month of June.
The squads that have been announced are for the solitary Afghanistan Test to be played from June 14-18, followed by the UK tour where they will play three One Day Internationals (ODIs) and three T20s each against England and Ireland. Jasprit Bumrah, Rohit Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are all missing alongside Kohli from the test squad, where Ajinkya Rahane will captain the squad.
Afghanistan were granted Test status a year back from when the game will be played, in June 2017 when they and Ireland were made Full Members by the ICC. They will only be the fourth team to play their maiden Test against India, after Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh being the other three.
Ravichandran Ashwin has been named in the squad for the test against Afghanistan while Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who were a travelling with the squad for the Test series in South Africa have been given some much needed rest with the selectors adding Shardul Thakur and a spinner in Kuldeep to the squad.
Test squad: Ajinkya Rahane (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, M Vijay, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Karun Nair, Wriddhiman Saha, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Hardik Pandya, Ishant Sharma, Shardul Thakur.
Along with the test team, a fully packed ODI andT20 squads were announced to take on Ireland and England in July. A few notable selections have been made for the fixtures with Rahane, who is captaining the Test squad being dropped from the shorter format.
KL Rahul, who is hogging the limelight while in the middle of a splendid IPL season, has been asked to make his way back while 27-year-old Punjab speedster Siddarth Kaul has been included in both the ODI and T20I squads.
BCCI have also given a new lifeline to 32-year-old Ambati Rayudu, who last played an ODI in June 2016 again on the back of a brilliant IPL season. A surprise pick has been off-spinner Washington Sundar who has replaced Axar Patel in the squad, while the likes of Shreyas Iyer and Dinesh Karthik have retained their place.
ODI squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni (wk), Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Siddarth Kaul, Umesh Yadav, Shardul Thakur, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav
T20I squad: Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul,Suresh Raina, Manish Pandey, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Siddarth Kaul, Umesh Yadav
