Gurkeerat Singh had been the one constant in many man-of-the-match decisions over the last few months in domestic fixtures and the young Punjab all-rounder’s perseverance paid off today when the selection committee picked him in the squad for the first three ODIs against South Africa.
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Gurkeerat, 25, had two impressive outings for India A recently.
Gurkeerat was rewarded for his excellent performances for the India A team as he was named in the 15-man squad for the first three ODIs and will fight it out with Binny for the all-rounder’s spot. Dhoni had retired from Test cricket during the tour of Australia past year .
Gurkeerat Singh Mann and Sreenath Aravind have been named in both the sides who were selected for the national duty for the first time.
While Ashwin is a certainty, it will be interesting to see if selectors prefer Harbhajan Singh as the second spinner due to his IPL exploits and his ability to restrict batsmen in shorter format.
The players left out from the full-strength ODI squad that had toured Bangladesh were allrounder Ravindra Jadeja and seamer Dhawal Kulkarni. “We have not discussed anything about captaincy of ODIs”. Shami last played for India during the 2015 World Cup and has since, been sidelined from all forms cricket.
Veteran leg-spinner Amit Mishra was recalled in both ODI and T20 squads announced by BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur after a meeting of the selection committee here. “The “A” series has gone well and we as selectors are happy that a lot of exciting youngsters are coming up”, said Patil. India is set to play three T20 Internationals, five One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and four Test matches in the Mahatma Gandhi-Nelson Mandela series which is set to start from October 2.
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T20Is: MS Dhoni (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Ajinkya Rahane, Ambati Rayudu, Stuart Binny, R Ashwin, Axar Patel, Harbhajan Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohit Sharma, Amit Mishra, S Aravind.
