Virat Kohli will not play Delhi vs Railways fixture

The latest development has suggested that senior batter Virat Kohli will not be playing for Delhi in their ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy 2025-26 campaign's upcoming clash against Railways. This match will be the sixth round of the competition and is slated to be held on Tuesday, January 6 at the KSCA Three Ovals Ground 2 in Alur.

The Delhi & District Cricket Association President Rohan Jaitley had previously confirmed that the star batter will be seen donning the Delhi jersey for this clash. However, the latest update is that the 37-year-old will not be available. The exact reason is unknown, but it can be assumed that the cricketer will soon be joining the Indian team for the upcoming ODI series against New Zealand, forcing him to be unavailable.

While Delhi's captain Rishabh Pant has also been named in India's 15-member squad for the three ODIs, there are positive signs that the wicketkeeper-batter will be playing the upcoming match before leaving for national commitments. The series against the BlackCaps will commence on January 11, and the players are supposed to join the squad on Wednesday.

The BCCI has made it mandatory for the centrally contracted players to take part in at least two matches of the domestic competition when away from national duty. Since Kohli has already played a couple of games, he is not required to play further. Pant, meanwhile, has played all the five matches for Delhi, and may be seen playing his last on Tuesday, before returning to the Shubman Gill-led side.

Coming back to Kohli's exploits in the domestic competition, the top-order batter started the season with a magnificent hundred in the opening round and followed it up with a solid 77 in the second. He was also given the Player of the Match award for his knock in the second round fixture, where Pant had also shone with a half-century. Both players will now be seen with the Men in Blue for the ODIs.

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India ODI squad for New Zealand series: Shubman Gill (captain), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer (vice-captain), KL Rahul (wicketkeeper-batter), Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, and Arshdeep Singh