India ODI squad announced: Suryakumar Yadav, Prasidh Krishna, Krunal Pandya included

TEAM – Virat Kohli (Capt), Rohit Sharma (vc), Shikhar Dhawan, Shubman Gill, Shreyas, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), KL Rahul (wk), Y Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Krunal Pandya, W Sundar, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Md. Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Shardul Thakur.

— BCCI (@BCCI) March 19, 2021

Three potential ODI debutants in the squad.

Prasidh Krishna, Suryakumar Yadav and Krunal Pandya have all been named in India’s 18-player squad to take on England.#INDvENG pic.twitter.com/PKJsZbK3Ug

— ICC (@ICC) March 19, 2021

In a bid to improve their show in the ODIs, the selection committee headed by former India pacer Chetan Sharma has included Suryakumar Yadav, Prasidh Krishna and Krunal Pandya as surprising inclusions. In the last two ODI series, India lost both. In Pune, India have played four ODIs out of which they won two.

Krishna and Krunal have been rewarded for their good performances in the recently held Vijay Hazare Trophy while Suryakumar’s selection was not a surprise given his stupendous T20 debut in the fourth T20 against England.

Krishna, who has been on the radar for a while and has also earned Virat Kohli’s praise, took 14 wickets in the domestic 50-over competition while Krunal, who has played 18 T20s, earned his maiden ODI call-up by scoring two hundreds and as many fifties in five games for Baroda.

Stupmer-batsman Rishabh Pant and pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar are back in the side and so is Washington Sundar, who played his only ODI in December 2017.

Bhuvneshwar, who has done well in the ongoing T20 series, is set to play his first ODI since August 2019.

In the absence of the rested Jasprit Bumrah, who recently got married, and injured Mohammad Shami, the UP pacer will lead the pace attack.

Left-arm pacer T Natarajan has regained fitness and therefore finds a place in the squad following an impressive outing in Australia.

It seems, the squad has been picked in such a way that India continue to work on their preparation for the T20 World Cup.

Ishan Kishan has not been picked despite his impressive show in the T20s probably because the team already has two wicket-keepers in KL Rahul and Pant.

Rahul opens batting in T20s but he would bat in the middle order in ODIs with Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit being team’s preferred openers.

Pant would keep wickets and also bat on middle order, leaving no place for Kishan in playing XI.

The players who have missed out from the previous series in Australia are Mayank Agarwal, Navdeep Saini and Manish Pandey.

Pressure will be on Shikhar Dhawan to perform from game one considering India are spoilt for choice in the opening department that also has K L Rahul and Shubman Gill.

Following his impressive run in Tests, Mohammed Siraj has also been picked for the games to be played in front of empty stands.

Though Ravindra Jadeja has resumed training, he is yet to regain full fitness and hence has not been included.

With PTI inputs