After his shocking omission from the Test squad for the home series against New Zealand, Hanuma Vihari has now been added to India A squad for the three unofficial Test matches against South Africa A. The right-handed batsman will now be playing under Priyank Panchal in three red-ball games before India’s tour of South Africa.
The tour provides him with an opportunity to do well and earn a recall in the Test squad. Team India will be flying to SA for a full-fledged series following the NZ series.
Since Vihari was part of the complete UK tour, he looked a confirmed selection in the squad for the home series. But the selectors surprisingly replaced him with Shreyas Iyer, who is uncapped in this format.
Vihari hasn’t played a Test match since his famous knock of 23* off 161 in the Sydney Test match. Courtesy of his long stay in the middle, India saved the Test match and the series remained levelled 1-1.
He was ruled out of the home season that followed and returned for the UK tour. Vihari has donned 12 Test caps so far – he has scored 624 runs. The tally includes 1 century and 4 half-centuries. Apart from Vihari, Suryakumar Yadav and Prithvi Shaw were also dropped. Shaw will be flying to SA with the ‘A’ team.
Ajinkya Rahane will lead Team India in the opening Test match while Virat Kohli will return to take over the charge in the 2nd Test match. Rohit Sharma has been rested for both the fixtures.
Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur and Mohammed Siraj are other players who have been rested. New Zealand are scheduled to play 3 T20Is and 2 Test matches on their tour of India, which will be played from November 17 to December 7.
India A squad for South Africa tour: Priyank Panchal (c), Prithvi Shaw, Hanuma Vihari, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Devdutt Padikkal, Sarfaraz Khan, Baba Aparajith, Upendra Yadav (wk), K Gowtham, Rahul Chahar, Saurabh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Umran Malik, Ishan Porel, Arzan Nagwaswalla.
