IND vs AUS: Change in India squad for Delhi Test, Jaydev Unadkat released to play Ranji final for Saurashtra

Not only in the Australian camp, there is a change in the squad in the Indian camp too as seamer Jaydev Unadkat has been released to play the Ranji Trophy final for Saurashtra against Bengal, starting February 16th at Eden Gardens in Kolkata; whereas, the second of the four-match Test series will begin on February 17th in Delhi. Unadkat, who returned to the Test side after almost a decade during Bangladesh series late last year, was picked for the Border-Gavaskar series but didn’t play the first Test in Nagpur as the management went ahead with Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj. The board hasn’t named Unadkat’s replacement for the second Test.

On Sunday, Saurashtra defeated former champions Karnataka by four wickets in Bengaluru to reach their third final in past four editions while Bengal beat Madhya Pradesh to enter the summit clash too. Earlier, all three of Unadkat, Cheteshwar Pujara and returning Ravindra Jadeja played for Saurashtra against Tamil Nadu in the group game before joining the pre-series camp in Nagpur ahead of the first Test.

On the other hand, Australia has roped in left-arm orthodox Matthew Kuhnemann as replacement of Mitchell Swepson who returned home for the birth of his first child. Mitchell Starc, who missed the first Test due to the finger injury he sustained last year, will also be joining the Australia squad for the remainder of the series. There is no news about Josh Hazlewood and Cameroon Green, both of whom were also benched for Nagpur game due to respective injuries.

Meanwhile, India has taken a convincing 1-0 lead in the four-match Test series by winning the first Test by an innings and 132 runs inside three days. Captain Rohit Sharma scored his first Border-Gavaskar series hundred while Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin both returned with five-wicket hauls. Axar Patel, who didn’t really do damage with the ball in hand, compensated with his incredible 84 in India’s only innings.

As for India, injured Shreyas Iyer is also expected to join the team ahead of the second match, it would be interesting to see if the management will make any change to the winning XI or not. The Aussies are however likely to make several changes to the XI.