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Hanuma Vihari back in senior squad, Wriddhiman Saha named as second wicketkeeper
Rohit Sharma has replaced Virat Kohli as India’s ODI captain – making him the leader of both India’s white-ball sides – ahead of the South Africa tour, one where he will also take over from Ajinkya Rahane as the Test vice-captain. Rohit had earlier in November taken over as full-time T20I captain from Kohli, who had stepped down at the end India’s T20 World Cup campaign.
Along with the returning Rohit, who sat out the New Zealand Test series to manage his workload, KL Rahul too returned to the squad – an 18-member outfit for the Tests; the ODI line-up will be named later – along with Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami. As reported earlier by ESPNcricinfo, none of Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel and Shubman Gill were considered for selection because of injuries.
Jayant Yadav, who impressed during his Test comeback after four years, retained his place as the second frontline spinner behind R Ashwin. Shardul Thakur, who was given a break for the home series against New Zealand, was also back in the mix in the squad that has six fast-bowling options to go with the two main spinners.
India’s middle-order bears a familiar look with all of Cheteshwar Pujara, Shreyas Iyer and Ajinkya Rahane retained from the line-up that played the Test series against New Zealand. But Jadeja’s absence has possibly opened up a spot in the batting order, which could be filled by the returning Hanuma Vihari, with Pant, possibly, taking back the main wicketkeeper’s position from Wriddhiman Saha.
Vihari, who has spent the last three weeks with the India A team in South Africa, has been in form, with three back-to-back half-centuries. He was left out of the New Zealand Tests because of the team management’s reluctance to play a sixth batter in home conditions, and now that he has been drafted in, Suryakumar Yadav has been left out.
Vihari is the only one to have been brought in from the ‘A’ squad currently on tour; other ‘A’ team members, fast bowlers Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar and Arzan Nagwaswalla, as well as left-arm spinner Saurabh Kumar, will with the senior team as part of the reserve-bowling contingent.
The selectors also reposed faith in Saha as the second wicketkeeper, despite KS Bharat’s strong showing in Kanpur, where he came on a substitute for the injured Saha and effected a number of sharp dismissals.
Meanwhile, with both Rohit and Rahul back, Mayank Agarwal could move back to being the reserve opener, a slot that has seen a lot of competition of late, especially with all of Abhimanyu Easwaran, Priyank Panchal and Prithvi Shaw being among the runs on the ‘A’ tour. Agarwal finished the Mumbai Test with a Player-of-the-Match performance, leading India’s batting with 150 and 62 in India’s victory that helped them take the series.
End of Kohli’s stint as India’s white-ball captain
Rohit’s elevation to ODI captaincy officially brings an end to Kohli’s tenure as white-ball captain, one he took over full-time in January 2017. While his record as such makes for excellent reading – of the 60 captains to lead in 50 or more men’s ODIs, only three have a better win-loss record than Kohli – India failed to win an ICC tournament under him; they finished runners-up at the 2017 Champions Trophy and were losing semi-finalists at the 50-over World Cup in 2019. In Kohli’s only T20 World Cup as captain, last month in the UAE, India crashed out after the group stage following back-to-back losses to Pakistan and New Zealand.
Rohit’s elevation to ODI captaincy officially brings an end to Kohli’s tenure as white-ball captain, one he took over full-time in January 2017. While his record as such makes for excellent reading – of the 60 captains to lead in 50 or more men’s ODIs, only three have a better win-loss record than Kohli – India failed to win an ICC tournament under him; they finished runners-up at the 2017 Champions Trophy and were losing semi-finalists at the 50-over World Cup in 2019. In Kohli’s only T20 World Cup as captain, last month in the UAE, India crashed out after the group stage following back-to-back losses to Pakistan and New Zealand.
Meanwhile, Rahane’s demotion marks quite a steep fall for him. It was only earlier this year that he led India to a historic Test series win in Australia in Kohli’s absence. Rahane was central to India’s turnaround in Melbourne, where his century helped India level the series after they were bowled out for 36 in the series opener in Adelaide.
Since that century, though, Rahane’s lack of runs came in for scrutiny. He now averages 24.39 across his last 16 Tests, with his career average dipping below 40. After scores of 35 and 4 in the first Tests against New Zealand in Kanpur, Rahane missed the Mumbai Test because of an injury.
With the tour pushed back by a week following a period of uncertainty after the discovery of Omicron, the new Covid-19 variant, in southern Africa, the India squad is now expected to assemble in Mumbai ahead of their departure on December 12. They will play three Tests and as many ODIs on tour, with the T20Is, that were originally a part of the itinerary, expected to be played later.
India open the tour with the Boxing Day Test in Centurion, followed by Tests at Wanderers and Newlands. The final Test of the series, from January 11-15, is also likely to be Kohli’s 100th.
Shashank Kishore is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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