Siraj, Malik, Jadeja to miss Duleep Trophy first round, BCCI names replacements

Mumbai, Aug 27: India pacers Mohammed Siraj and Umran Malik along with all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, have been ruled out of the first round of the 2024-25 Duleep Trophy. Both Siraj and Malik are suffering from an illness and are not expected to be fit in time for their Duleep Trophy fixtures, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said on Tuesday.

Pacer Navdeep Saini will replace Siraj in the Team B squad, while Gaurav Yadav will replace Malik in the Team C squad. Jadeja has also been released from the Team B squad but his replacement was not named. Nitish Kumar Reddy's participation will be subject to fitness, a BCCI release stated, as he is recovering from a sports hernia surgery. The tournament is set to begin on September 5 in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh and M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru.

Originally a zonal competition with teams representing six zones North, South, East, West, Central, and North-East - the Duleep Trophy will feature only four teams this time. As the second round coincides with the home Test series against Bangladesh starting on September 19, players selected for the Test series will be replaced in the Duleep Trophy.

Shubman Gill will lead India A, Abhimanyu Easwaran to captain India B while Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shreyas Iyer will don the captain's hat for India C and India D, respectively. The revised squads of the four teams for the first round of the tournament are:

India A: Shubman Gill (C), Mayank Agarwal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel (WK), KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Tanush Kotian, Kuldeep Yadav, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan, Vidwath Kaverappa, Kumar Kushagra, Shaswat Rawat.

India B: Abhimanyu Easwaran (C), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant (WK), Musheer Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy*, Washington Sundar, Navdeep Saini, Yash Dayal, Mukesh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, R Sai Kishore, Mohit Awasthi, N Jagadeesan (WK).

India C: Ruturaj Gaikwad (C), Sai Sudharsan, Rajat Patidar, Abishek Porel (WK), Suryakumar Yadav, B Indrajith, Hrithik Shokeen, Manav Suthar, Gaurav Yadav, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Anshul Khamboj, Himanshu Chauhan, Mayank Markande, Aryan Juyal (WK), Sandeep Warrier.

India D: Shreyas lyer (C), Atharva Taide, Yash Dubey, Devdutt Padikkal, Ishan Kishan (WK), Ricky Bhui, Saransh Jain, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Aditya Thakare, Harshit Rana, Tushar Deshpande, Akash Sengupta, KS Bharat (WK), Saurabh Kumar.