Dashing Uttar Pradesh left-hander Rinku Singh has been added to the India B squad along with a host of other fringe players for the next round of Duleep Trophy matches beginning on September 12 in Anantpur as the Test players picked for the series against Bangladesh, sans Sarfaraz Khan will head for the preparatory camp in Chennai, starting Thursday.

Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Dhruv Jurel, Kuldeep Yadav and Akash Deep are leaving the India A team and will be replaced by Pratham Singh, Akshay Wadkar, Shaik Rasheed, Shams Mulani and Aaqib Khan. Mayank Agarwal will take over the India A captaincy from Gill, while fast bowler Vidhwath Kaverappa will move from India A to India D for the second round.

Advertisement

India B will be without the services of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rishabh Pant and Yash Dayal, and will be replaced by Suyash Prabhudessai, Himanshu Mantri and Rinku, whose absence from the tournament’s first round raised many eyebrows.

Sarfaraz, who is part of India’s squad for the first Test against Bangladesh, will stay with India B for the second round of Duleep Trophy matches that are scheduled to end on September 15, three days before the start of the Chennai Test.

Meanwhile, India C are the only team unaffected by the changes, while India D will be without Axar Patel and Tushar Deshpande, who is injured. Kaverappa and Nishant Sindhu will join their squad.

The players released from the Duleep Trophy will join the Test regulars — Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Siraj at the preparatory camp in Chennai ahead of the first Test against Bangladesh starting September 19.

In the first round of Duleep Trophy matches, India B beat India A with teenaged sensation Musheer Khan hogging the limelight after scoring a mammoth 181, and India C beat India D with 22-year-old left-arm spinner Manav Suthar taking a match-turning seven-wicket haul in the third innings.

In the tournament’s second round, India A will lock horns with India D while India B will face India C. Both the games will be played in Anantpur.

Updated squads for Duleep Trophy second round

India A: Mayank Agarwal (C), Riyan Parag, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Tanush Kotian, Prasidh Krishna, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan, Kumar Kushagra (wk), Shaswat Rawat, Pratham Singh, Akshay Wadkar, Shaik Rasheed, Shams Mulani, Aaqib Khan

India B: Abhimanyu Easwaran (C), Sarfaraz Khan, Musheer Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Navdeep Saini, Mukesh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, R Sai Kishore, Mohit Awasthi, N Jagadeesan (wk), Rinku Singh, Suyash Prabhudessai, Himanshu Mantri

India C: Ruturaj Gaikwad (C), 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 (C), Atharva Taide, Yash Dubey, Devdutt Padikkal, Sanju Samson (wk), Ricky Bhui, Saransh Jain, Arshdeep Singh, Aditya Thakare, Harshit Rana, Akash Sengupta, KS Bharat (wk), Saurabh Kumar, Vidhwath Kaverappa, Nishant Sindhu