Duleep Trophy 2019: Three Karnataka players included; Bengaluru to host tourney
The squads for Duleep Trophy 2019 have been announced. Karnataka’s Shreyas Gopal, Karun Nair and Ronit More have secured their spots in the squads
FollowBengaluru: BCCI’s selection committee headed by MSK Prasad picked the squads of India Blue, India Green and India Red for the Duleep Trophy 2019 first-class tournament to be played in Bengaluru from August 17 to September 8.
Three Karnataka players Shreyas Gopal, Karun Nair and Ronit More have secured their spots in the squads. Accordingly, Gopal will represent India Blue team, Nair and More are part of India Red.
Back to red ball format
The season-opening Duleep Trophy, which has been India's only day-night first-class tournament with pink ball for the last three seasons, is set to go back to the day format with red ball due to lack of TV coverage.
BCCI's GM (Cricket Operations) Saba Karim confirmed that save the final from September 5-9, which will be telecast live on Star Sports, all the other matches will be traditional red-ball games like the old times.
"We have floodlights at the Chinnaswamy but we are not playing with pink ball under lights as there is no live coverage. Only the final match will be a day/night affair as that's the only match to be aired live," Karim told PTI on Tuesday (August 6).
Asked if this will be a roadblock in moving towards pink ball Tests in future, Karim disagreed.
"I don't think so. If everyone associated with Indian cricket is on the same page, maybe we can think of having India A first class games with pink balls. I am not saying anything is confirmed but you never know if everyone comes on same page," Karim said.
However, a senior BCCI official said the decision to scrap pink balls save the final has been done keeping bigger picture in mind.
"The Indian team is not playing any pink ball cricket in near future. All our Test engagements are a part of World Test Championship. And we are not playing any Day/Night games in World Test Championship," the senior official, who is privy to Indian team management's selection policies, told PTI on condition of anonymity.
Duleep Trophy 2019 squads
India Blue: Shubman Gill (captain), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Rajat Patidar, Ricky Bhui, Anmolpreet Singh, Ankeet Bawne, Snell Patel (wicketkeeper), Shreyas Gopal, Saurabh Kumar, Jalaj Saxena, Tushar Deshpande, Basil Thampi, Aniket Chouhdary, Diwesh Pathania, Ashutosh Amar.
India Green: Faiz Fazal (captain), Akshath Reddy, Dhruv Shorey, Siddhesh Lad, Priyam Garg, Akshdeep Nath, Rahul Chahar, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, Jayant Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Ishan Porel, Tanveer-Ul-Haq, Akshay Wadkar (wicketkeeper), Rajesh Mohanty, Milind Kumar.
India Red: Priyank Panchal (captain), Abhimanyu Easwaran, Axar Patel, Karun Nair, Ishan Kishan (wicketkeeper), Hapreet Singh Bhatia, Mahipal Lomror, Aditya Sarwate, Akshay Wakhare, Varun Aaron, Ronit More, Jaydev Unadkat, Sandeep Warrier, Ankit Kalsi.
(With inputs from PTI)
