India : BCCI announces 15-man squad for West Indies Test series; Shreyas Iyer takes six-month red-ball break, and Manav Suthar earns maiden Test call-up.

India : The senior men’s selection committee announced a 15-man team for the forthcoming two-Test series against the West Indies. Notably, the BCCI has given Shreyas Iyer, who was in contention, a six-month ban from red-ball cricket after he opted out because of frequent back spasms.

Rishabh Pant, meanwhile, was forced to miss the fourth Test match against England in Manchester due to a foot ailment. Ravindra Jadeja has been named the new vice-captain in his place.

For this series, Rishabh Pant hasn’t fully recovered. For the next one, we’re hopeful he’ll be well. We chose Jadeja as our vice captain for that reason,” head selector Ajit Agarkar stated during the press conference.

It’s interesting to note that Sarfaraz Khan, who was involved in the competition, has once again been left out and is now anticipated to represent Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy.

Karun Nair departed : 

Following his poor performance in the five-match Test series against England, Karun Nair was removed from the Test squad. The captain, Agarkar, said that the selectors were not impressed by the senior batter’s 205 runs in four matches across five Test matches. The selectors have summoned up Devdutt Padikkal, who was benched for the England series, in his place.

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To be honest, we had somewhat higher expectations. In Test matches, he has played four. At this stage, we think Padikkal provides a bit more. We wish we could administer 15 to 20 tests to everyone, but that isn’t how things operate. One member of the Test team is Padikkal. He was a member of the Australian Test team. He struck a fifty while playing against England in Dharamshala. He has performed admirably for India A. Therefore, I did have some higher expectations for Karun during the England tour,” Agarkar stated.

India’s team: Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Kuldeep Yadav, N Jagadeeshan, Sai Sudharasan, Shubman Gill (C), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Devdutt Padikkal, Dhruv Jurel, and Ravindra Jadeja (VC).