The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has announced the squad for the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024. There were a few shockers in the form of Abhimanyu Easwaran, Harshit Rana, and Nitish Kumar Reddy's inclusion in the squad and Ruturaj Gaikwad, Mohammed Shami, and Kuldeep Yadav's exclusion from the squad. However, there are some essential reasons behind Shami and Kuldeep's exclusion from the squad.
While Shami hasn't been able to recover from the ankle injury yet, which he sustained during the ODI World Cup 2023, Kuldeep Yadav suffered from a 'chronic left groin issue' during the 1st Test match between India and New Zealand. He was also excluded from the team in the 2nd Test match, which didn't sit well with the fans since they assumed that he was dropped from the team, which wasn't the case. Hence, neither of the two players was selected for the upcoming BGT 2024 series, which is scheduled to begin on November 22.
BGT squad: Rohit Sharma (C), Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant (WK), Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (WK), R Ashwin, R Jadeja, Mohd. Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar.
Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed
Ruturaj Gaikwad excluded from BGT 2024 series despite being captain of India A
The Board has sent a few players in the India A squad to play a 2-match series against Australia A before the start of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024. Post this, they will play a game against the senior India team and then will return. Now, Ruturaj Gaikwad is the captain, and Abhimanyu Easwaran is the vice-captain of the India A team.
Surprisingly, Easwaran got a place in the main squad for the BGT series, but Ruturaj was sidelined quite conveniently. This isn't the first time the selectors have ignored Gaikwad despite scoring tons of runs in various tournaments. He has been consistent but hasn't gotten the kind of recognition he deserves from the Board.