Suryakumar Yadav has been ruled out of the opening round of the 2024-25 Duleep Trophy to nurse a hand injury he sustained during last week's pre-season fixture for Mumbai at the Buchi Babu Invitational Tournament in Coimbatore. Suryakumar has been advised rest and is currently at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru for a routine assessment.
Suryakumar didn't bat in the second innings of the fixture against TNCA XI last week, after injuring his hand while fielding on the third day. At the time, the Mumbai team management confirmed the move was precautionary keeping in mind his participation in the season-opening Duleep Trophy.
Suryakumar, India's T20I captain, recently expressed keenness to pitch for a Test comeback. Having not played any first-class cricket in over a year, Suryakumar made himself available for the pre-season Buchi Babu Tournament to tune up for red-ball cricket with India slated to play 10 Tests over the next five months, starting with the two-match series against Bangladesh from September 19 in Chennai.
Suryakumar, whose only Test so far came last year against Australia, was named in the India C squad, led by Ruturaj Gaikwad, who will be taking on Shreyas Iyer's India D in Anantapur. India A and India B will simultaneously play the other opening-round fixture at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
Recently, fast bowlers Mohammed Siraj and Umran Malik had also been ruled out of the opening round of Duleep Trophy because of illness, and Ravindra Jadeja had been withdrawn, though no reason was provided for him by the BCCI. Navdeep Saini and Gaurav Yadav will replace Siraj and Malik for the India B and C squads respectively.
Meanwhile, Nitish Kumar Reddy has been declared fit by the NCA. His inclusion was subject to fitness after he was diagnosed with a groin injury that led to his withdrawal from India's T20I squad to Zimbabwe in July.
Revised squads for Duleep Trophy first round
India A: Shubman Gill (capt), Mayank Agarwal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel (wk), KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Tanush Kotian, Kuldeep Yadav, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan, Vidwath Kaverappa, Kumar Kushagra, Shaswat Rawat.
India B: Abhimanyu Easwaran (capt), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant (wk), Musheer Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Navdeep Saini, Yash Dayal, Mukesh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, R Sai Kishore, Mohit Awasthi, N Jagadeesan (wk)
India C: Ruturaj Gaikwad (capt), Sai Sudharsan, Rajat Patidar, Abishek Porel (wk), B Indrajith, Hrithik Shokeen, Manav Suthar, Gaurav Yadav, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Anshul Khamboj, Himanshu Chauhan, Mayank Markande, Aryan Juyal (wk), Sandeep Warrier
India D: Shreyas Iyer (capt), Atharva Taide, Yash Dubey, Devdutt Padikkal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Ricky Bhui, Saransh Jain, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Aditya Thakare, Harshit Rana, Tushar Deshpande, Akash Sengupta, KS Bharat (wk), Saurabh Kumar