Bengaluru: A month! That’s about all you get if you want a break from Indian cricket because come Thursday, the Duleep Trophy will be upon us.
The latest iteration of the domestic-season starter witnesses some of the biggest stars in the country lock horns until September 22, starting with India A versus India B at the M Chinnaswamy stadium here, and India C versus India D in Anantapur.
The whole tournament was supposed to be held in Anantapur, but given how the squads are stacked, it made more sense for the organisers to keep the India A v India B game in Bengaluru as the cream of the crop is part of the first two teams, many of whom are certainties for the upcoming India-Bangladesh two-Test series beginning September 19 in Chennai.
While the quality in the remaining two - India C and D - is laudable, the Shubman Gill-led India A and the Abhimanyu Easwaran-led India B have enough talent to fill out the Indian Test squad for the season which follows.
Obviously, that won’t be the case because the current Test team hardly has voids to fill save for perhaps back-up spinners and some middle-order options.
More importantly, the selectors will keep an eye on what their options are keeping the not-so-distant tour of Australia in mind.
This is exactly why the cameras will be trained on Rishabh Pant’s every move for India B.
It has been nearly two years since Pant donned the whites at any level in the aftermath of a career-threatening accident, but he rehabilitated well enough to return to white-ball formats. Pant's comeback performance hardly betrayed signs of him being away from the game for so long but Test cricket is a different ball game and his fitness will be watched, especially as a wicketkeeper.
Of course, several players want to get their hands into the mix and see if they can sway the selectors their way, but realistically, not many are going to get the go-ahead.
In a sense, this tournament and its rejigged format, hardly give more than a set of quality practice matches for the players to get their red-ball abilities bronzed.
That, actually, may not be a bad thing at all for almost all of these players have almost exclusively played white-ball cricket for far too long.
But that wait will continue for Karnataka pacer Prasidh Krishna, who continues to recover from a quadriceps injury. Prasidh was included in the squad after a four-month rehabilitation programme but trainers at the National Cricket Academy do not want to push for his reintegration.
Teams (from): India A: Shubman Gill (capt), Mayank Agarwal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel (wk), KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Tanush Kotian, Kuldeep Yadav, Akash Deep, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan, Vidwath Kaverappa, Kumar Kushagra, Shaswat Rawat.
India B: Abhimanyu Easwaran (capt), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant (wk), Musheer Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Navdeep Saini, Yash Dayal, Mukesh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, R Sai Kishore, Mohit Awasthi, N Jagadeesan (wk).
FORMAT
There will be a total of six four-day matches with each team playing the other three sides once in a single round-robin format. There will not be any knockout matches with the team that finishes on top of the points table at the end of the group stage being declared winners.
Test squad update
With the opening Test against Bangladesh starting on September 19 and the pre-Test camp scheduled for September 12, the selectors will likely name the squad for the two Tests upon the conclusion of the first round of the Duleep Trophy.