Aakash Chopra picks India’s 30-member squad for upcoming Australia tour

Later in 2020, India are set to tour Australia for a bilateral series. The Test series gets underway on December 3 at The Gabba in Brisbane. Last time around Virat Kohli and Co rolled over the Aussies by 2-1 after their bowlers along with the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara struck gold. In the meantime, Aakash Chopra, the former Indian cricketer, picked his 30-man Indian squad for the tour.

Recently, West Indies and Pakistan announced their jumbo squad for their tour of England, bearing in mind the COVID-19 pandemic. MSK Prasad, the former national selection panel chief, said that India should be taking the step and also backed his words with some explanation. As far as Chopra is concerned, he picked 24 members for all the formats and six names for only white-ball cricket.

Both Shardul Thakur and Shikhar Dhawan have played Test cricket, but Chopra picked them only for the white-ball format. Dhawan hasn’t played the format since the last two years and has had a rough time even in ODI and T20I cricket. The most notable omission was that of MS Dhoni’s. In the keeper’s slot, Chopra went for the talented Rishabh Pant and the experienced Wriddhiman Saha.

As the openers, Chopra picked four of them, namely KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw and Rohit Sharma. The middle order is a power-packed one with Kohli confirmed to play all the formats. It also has the skilled Shubman Gill, who has played only a couple of ODIs for India back in 2019. Choosing the spin-contingent wasn’t tough for Chopra.

The veteran zeroed in on Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravi Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav. Even as Chahal and Kuldeep have dominated white-ball cricket, Ashwin and Jadeja have done well in Tests. In the fast-bowler’s category, Aakash picked up as many as eight names.

Here’s Aakash Chopra’s squad:

Openers

Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw

Middle-order

Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill

Wicketkeepers

Wriddhiman Saha, Rishabh Pant

Spinners

Ravi Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal

Fast bowlers

Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Hardik Pandya

White-ball players only

Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Shardul Thakur, Shikhar Dhawan, Krunal Pandya, Rahul Chahar