Tamil Nadu stick with Vijay Shankar as skipper for the Deodhar Trophy

Deodhar Trophy is just round the corner and the squads are slowly being announced. The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) announced their squad for the same which begins from the March 25 in Vishakhapatnam.

The Deodhar Trophy sees the best performers from the Vijay Hazare Trophy clamped into India A and India B teams while the champions of Tamil Nadu will play both the teams as Semifinal 1 and Semifinal 2 and the finalists will, therefore, play on March 29. The finalists will be decided using the rule of round robin.

The Tamil Nadu squad is out and there are few changes in the roster. A few of the players from the squad have left to represent India for the ACC Emerging Teams Cup in Bangladesh. Baba Aparijith and Aswin Crist are the two who have left the squad for the same. The beneficiary of the two players leaving are L Suryapprakash and J Kousik. The first one being a batter and the second one being a pacer.

T Natarajan who will be playing his debut Indian Premier League season with the Kings XI Punjab has been left out of the squad. While a medium pacer, K Vighnesh has also been excluded after missing the Vijay Hazare Trophy due to injury.

There was a surprise exclusion of the India under-19 player S Radhakrishnan. He was in the squad which won the Vijay Hazare Trophy recently. Vijay Shankar who is an all-rounder will lead the Tamil Nadu squad for this tournament. He has impressed everyone with his captaincy. The youngster will lead the squad with the former Indian wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik in it.

The selected 15-man squad for the Deodhar Trophy is as follows:

Vijay Shankar (captain), Dinesh Karthik, V Ganga Sridhar Raju, B Indrajith, L Suryapprakash, M Kaushik Gandhi, N Jagadeesan, J Kousik, M Mohammed, W Anthony Dhas, R Rohit, Rahil S Shah, M Ashwin, R Sai Kishore, M S Washington Sundar.