Mayank Agarwal roped in as Shikhar Dhawan's replacement for the ODI series against West Indies

The year continues to get even better for Karnataka and Team India Test opener Mayank Agarwal. After having taken to Test match opening like fish to water, Mayank Agarwal has now been roped in as a replacement for Shikhar Dhawan in the upcoming One-day series against the West Indies. Agarwal’s inclusion comes in the wake of Shikhar Dhawan’s injury.

The southpaw had suffered a deep cut on his left knee during a Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy fixture against Maharashtra. The injury ruled him out of contention from the three-match Twenty20 International series against the defending champions West Indies, paving way for the inclusion of Sanju Samson, who was initially left out of the squad.

“While Dhawan’s stitches are off and his wound is healing gradually, he still needs some more time before he regains full match fitness,” the BCCI Medical Team was quoted as saying in a media release by CricBuzz.

Not the first time that Mayank Agarwal has been called-up to the national ODI squad

Having made his Test match debut against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Agarwal has since then cemented his place in the set-up as one of the first-choice openers alongside Rohit Sharma. In nine Tests, Agarwal has racked up 872 runs at an average of 67.07 including three hundred and as many half-centuries and a whirlwind double-hundred.

But, it is not only in Test cricket that Agarwal has been scoring truckloads of runs. The Karnataka batsman has been in great form in domestic white-ball tournaments. Agarwal played a crucial knock in the 2019 Vijay Hazare Trophy final against Tamil Nadu. Overall, in 79 List A games, Agarwal has scored 3869 runs at an average of 50.90 and a strike-rate of 101.57 with the help of 13 tons and 15 half-centuries.

This is also not the first time that Agarwal has earned a call-up in ODIs. During the 2019 World Cup, Mayank was roped in as a cover for an injured Vijay Shankar.

The three-match ODI series between India and West Indies will kickstart from December 15 with the first match set to take place at the Chidambaram stadium in Chennai followed by Vizag and Cuttack on 18th and 22nd of December, respectively.

India squad for the ODIs:

Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma (VC), Mayank Agarwal, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant (wk), Shivam Dube, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Deepak Chahar, Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

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