Hyderabad: The senior men's cricket team selection committee led by former India cricket Ajit Agarkar announced all four squads for the Duleep Trophy 2024-25 season, which marks the commencement of red-ball cricket in the domestic circuit. There were reports circulating in the media according to which Indian captains Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Virat Kohli will feature in the Duleep Trophy, as dress rehearsal ahead of the long test cricket season. However, all three of them are not included in the squads. So, let's just delve into the matter and understand when was the last time Rohit, Kohli and Bumrah played their last domestic games.
The Duleep Trophy will commence on September 5 and the first round will be at the iconic M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru while Bangladesh's tour of India will kick off on September 19.
Rohit Sharma:
Indian skipper Rohit Sharma's last domestic cricket match was nearly eight years ago in September 2016. His last domestic game came in the Duleep Trophy while playing for India Blue against India Red. However, he didn't have a perfect outing in the match, failing to make big scores in both the innings. He managed to score only 32 runs in the entire match including a duck in the first innings.
Virat Kohli:
It’s been over a decade since Kohli played a domestic game. He has been a consistent performer at the international level, especially in Test cricket, having registered the most double centuries by an Indian in the longest format of the game. Kohli's, who made his Test debut vs West Indies in 2011, last domestic match was a Ranji Trophy game while playing for Delhi against Uttar Pradesh. He failed to stitch long innings and accumulated only 57 runs in the match with scores like 14 and 43.
Jasprit Bumrah:
There will be no doubt if anybody calls Bumrah the most improved cricketer across formats to play at the international level. His ability to quickly adapt to the conditions and change his game plans accordingly has helped him to become the best bowler in the world. Bumrah made his Test debut in 2018 and has been part of the Indian team constantly since his debut. He usually gets rested in the red-ball games at home while playing almost every game of the away tours to manage his workload.
Bumrah hasn't played any cricket since the Indian cricket team's T20 World Cup triumph on June 29 and will not be a part of any squad of the Duleep Trophy. His last domestic match came during the 2016/17 Ranji Trophy season when he played for Gujarat against Jharkhand in January 2017. He picked up figures of 6/29 in the match.
The four squads for the first round of the tournament are as below: -
Team A:Shubman Gill (C), Mayank Agarwal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel, KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Tanush Kotian, Kuldeep Yadav, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan, Vidwath Kaverappa, Kumar Kushagra, Shaswat Rawat.
Team B:Abhimanyu Easwaran (C), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant, Musheer Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy*, Washington Sundar, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohd Siraj, Yash Dayal, Mukesh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, R Sai Kishore, Mohit Awasthi, N Jagadeesan (WK).
Team C:Ruturaj Gaikwad (C), Sai Sudharsan, Rajat Patidar, Abishek Porel (WK), Suryakumar Yadav, B Indrajith, Hrithik Shokeen, Manav Suthar, Umran Malik, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Anshul Khamboj, Himanshu Chauhan, Mayank Markande, Aryan Juyal (WK), Sandeep Warrier.
Team D:Shreyas lyer (C), 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.
