Ishant ruled out of Duleep Trophy; Pankaj Rao called in as replacement

New Delhi: Indian pacer Ishant Sharma, who is currently in England will miss the ongoing Duleep Trophy tournament. The tall speedster was initially named in the India Blue squad but is set to be replaced.

Chattisgarh pacer Pankaj Rao has been named as Ishant’s replacement for Suresh Raina led side. The 27-year-old made Chattisgarh debut last year when BCCI gave affiliation to the state but he was first seen in 2009, playing for the Railways.

Ishant, on the other hand, had informed BCCI about his unavailability a week after the squads for Duleep Trophy were announced but the replacement was named just a day before India Blue’s encounter against India red, which begins on September 13.

While, Indian Test opener Abhinav Mukund has been ruled out of the tournament after being diagnosed with dengue. The Left-arm batsman was expected to lead the India side but it will be Dinesh Karthik filling the boots once again for India Reds

India Red suffered another setback as KC Gowtham is set to miss remaining two games due to illness and he will be replaced by Mumbai’s Vijay Gohil. 

Squads: 

India Red: Gahlaut Rahul Singh, Priyank Panchal, Sudip Chatterjee, Ishank Jaggi, Dinesh Karthik (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Baba Indrajith, Vijay Gohil, Karn Sharma, Basil Thampi, Ashok Dinda, Chama Milind, Prithvi Shaw, Siddarth Kaul, Akhil Herwadkar

India Blue: Suresh Raina (c), Samit Gohel, Srikar Bharat, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Manoj Tiwary, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar, Ishan Kishan (wk), Jayant Yadav, Bhargav Bhatt, Pankaj Rao, Ankit Rajpoot, Sagun Kamat, Jaydev Unadkat

India Green: Murali Vijay, Ravikumar Samarth, Prashant Chopra, Varun Aaron, Karun Nair, Ankit Bawne, Parthiv Patel(c/wk), Shahbaz Nadeem, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj, Mayank Dagar, Nitin Saini, Aniket Choudhary, Kaushik Gandhi