Rahane to lead India in one-off Test against Afghanistan, left out of limited-overs series in UK

Ajinkya Rahane will lead India in the one-off Test against Afghanistan in place of Virat Kohli, who has opted out of the contest to play for County side Surrey during the period.

Rahane, though, was left out of India’s limited-overs squads which will tour Ireland and England later in June.

Other than Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar were the notable exclusions from the Test squad.

In a surprising move, Karun Nair has been picked in place of Kohli for the Test. The 26-year-old is India’s second triple centurion in Test cricket after Virender Sehwag. He has scored 612 runs for his state this Ranji season.

Meanwhile, KL Rahul has been included in all the squads marking a return to the ODI fold for the Karnataka lad. Medium-pacer Siddharth Kaul has also been included in the squads for limited-overs series in both countries.

Squads

One-off Test against Afghanistan: Ajinkya Rahane (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Karun Nair, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami, Hardik Pandya, Ishant Sharma, Shardul Thakur.
Two-match T20I series against Ireland: Virat Kohli (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, Manish Pandey, MS Dhoni (wk), Dinesh Karthik, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Siddharth Kaul, Umesh Yadav.
Three-match T20I series against England: Virat Kohli (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, Manish Pandey, MS Dhoni (wk), Dinesh Karthik, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Siddharth Kaul, Umesh Yadav.
Three-match ODI series against England: Virat Kohli (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni (wk), Dinesh Karthik, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Siddharth Kaul, Umesh Yadav.
India A squad for four-day matches in UK: Karun Nair (c), R Samarth, Mayank Agarwal, AR Easwaran, Prithvi, H.Vihari, Ankit Bawne, Vijay Shankar, KS Bharat (wk), Jayant Yadav, Shahbaz Nadeem, Ankit Rajpoot, Md Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Rajneesh Gurbani.
India A squad for ODI tri-series in UK: Shreyas Iyer (c), Prithvi Shaw, Mayank Agarwal, Shubhman Gill, H. Vihari, Sanju Samson, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wk), Vijay Shankar, K Gowtham, Axar Patel, Krunal, Prasidh Krishna, Deepak Chahar, Khaleel Ahmed, Shardul Thakur.