Ambati Rayudu and Unmukt Chand to lead India A and B in Deodhar Trophy

Baroda batsman Ambati Rayudu has been appointed the captain of the India A side in the upcoming Deodhar Trophy while Delhi’s Unmukt Chand will lead India B in the three-team event. Deodhar Trophy will now be played on a 3-team format, which will comprise of the champion team of the Vijay Hazare tournament, in this case, Gujarat and these two teams. Traditionally the knockout competition was played on an annual basis among the 5 zonal teams. The two teams feature all the prominent Ranji Trophy performers this season with top run-getters like Shreyas Iyer of Mumbai, Sudip Chatterjee of Bengal and one of the leading wicket-takers Krishna Das of Assam getting a call-up in the two teams.

“I am happy but do not want to think too much about this India A call-up. My job is to score runs and I know I will be rewarded. I also think I would not need time to adapt as we have just played Hazare Trophy and now we are playing Mushtaq Ali T20. So I am in limited overs mode,” left-handed Chatterjee, who has scored four centuries this season told PTI from Nagpur.

Rayudu, who captained Baroda in the current Ranji season, will lead a 15-member strong side in the revamped version of the tournament. The A side has prominent names like Amit Mishra, Parvez Rasool, Naman Ojha and Varun Aaron to name a few. The B team also features young India aspirants like Shreyas Iyer, Sheldon Jackson, Karn Sharma and Mayank Agarwal. The tournament is slated to be held between January 24 and 28 and will feature four 50-over matches across five days.

Squads

India A: Murali Vijay, Jalaj Saxena, Mandeep Singh, Ambati Rayudu (captain), Kedar Jadhav, Naman Ojha, Parvez Rasool, Amit Mishra, Shahbaz Nadeem, Siddharth Kaul, Sreenath Aravind, Varun Aaron, Krishna Das, Sudip Chatterjee, Faiz Fazal.

India B: Unmukt Chand (captain), Mayank Agarwal, Baba Aparajith, Shreyas Iyer, Sheldon Jackson, Dinesh Karthik, Stuart Binny, Karn Sharma, Jayant Yadav, Dhawal Kulkarni, Nathu Singh, Shardul Thakur, Pawan Negi, Sachin Baby, Suryakumar Yadav.