The Indian Test squad for West Indies has been announced and while the selectors included new faces in Mayank Agarwal and Mohammed Siraj, there was no place for Indian ODI openers Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma.
Dhawan, who was part of India's squad for England, has lost his place after a rather mediocre performance and it could well mean that his Test career has hit a roadblock. Rohit, on the other hand, has been a prolific run-maker for India in the white-ball format, but his Test career has never really taken off.
However, former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly was not entirely convinced with his absence from the squad and took to Twitter to express his opinions.
Great win Rohit and the team @ImRo45 ..u were exceptional...I get surprised every time I don’t see ur name in the test team ..it’s not far away ..
— Sourav Ganguly (@SGanguly99) September 29, 2018
In 25 Test matches for India, Rohit has managed to score 1,479 runs at an average of 39. He has three hundreds and nine half-centuries to his name.
Was brilliant in the Asia Cup
In the just-concluded Asia Cup, Rohit was brilliant as a batsman and as a leader and his captaincy earned a plethora of rave reviews.
"Rohit was a calming influence and it showed on his captaincy. To keep his intensity going even after the start they had, showed he was really cool in every aspect of captaincy, the bowling changes he made were really good, to concede just around 100 runs in the last 30 overs, I thought it was brilliant," head coach Ravi Shastri told after the match against Bangladesh.
Virat Kohli, who was rested for the Asia Cup, makes a comeback and lead the side for the West Indies series. Young Prithvi Shaw was roped in for the latter stages in the England tour could get to make his debut along with KL Rahul at the top.
Mayank Agarwal's persistence with the bat paid off as he finally broke the door down and got his name in the list. The Karnataka batsman has been a prolific run-maker in domestic set-up and was the leading scorer in the last Ranji Trophy season with 1160 runs in 8 matches.
The first Test match will be held at Rajkot from October 4 to 8, followed by the second Test from October 12 to 16.
The five-match ODI series will begin on October 21 at Guwahati, followed by the second ODI on October 24th at Indore and third ODI at Pune on October 27th. The final two one-dayers will be held at Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram on October 29th and November 1.
The one-dayers will be followed by the three T20 Internationals to be held at Kolkata (November 4), Lucknow (November 6) and Chennai (November 11).
Full squad: Virat Kohli (captain), KL Rahul, Prithvi Shaw, Mayank Agarwal, C Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane (vc), H Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), R Ashwin, R Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, M Shami, Umesh Yadav, M Siraj, Shardul Thakur
