Mumbai: The team for the first Test against the visiting Proteas was announced by the BCCI in a media release on Thursday. After the national selectors met to pick the team, it was declared that Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh will miss the two-Test series owing to injuries.<\/p>\n
Dravid sustained two hairline fractures in his cheekbone during the second Test in Bangladesh, while Yuvraj is suffering from a ligament tear on his left wrist.<\/p>\n
Chief selector Krishnamachari Srikkanth said despite Dravid being keen to take part in the series, the panel decided to exclude him on the advice of the doctors to give him a three-week rest.<\/p>\n
However, VVS Laxman has recovered from his hand injury and has been included in the 15-member squad for the opening Test starting on February 6.<\/p>\n
Tamil Nadu batsman S Badrinath, who has been on the fringes for quite some time now, has been named as Dravid\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n
The role of reserve wicketkeeper has been taken away from Dinesh Karthik and handed over to Wriddhiman Saha.<\/p>\n
While Srikkanth refused to comment on Karthik\u2019s exclusion, he said his team of selectors had tried to pick the best possible side despite the injury woes.<\/p>\n
The absence of S Sreesanth, who is nursing a hamstring strain, has opened the doors for young pacer Abhimanyu Mithun, who has had an impressive domestic season.<\/p>\n
Squad for the first Test: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Murali Vijay, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, S Badrinath, MS Dhoni (Capt), Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra, Sudeep Tyagi, Pragyan Ojha, Abhimanyu Mithun, Wriddhiman Saha<\/p>\n
The selection panel also announced a 13-man Board President Eleven (BPXI) squad which will play a two-day game against the visitors on February 2 and 3.<\/p>\n
BPXI squad: Abhinav Mukund, Parthiv Patel, Rohit Sharma (Capt), Manish Pandey, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhishek Nayar, Piyush Chawla, R Ashwin, Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun, Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Manpreet Gony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai: The team for the first Test against the visiting Proteas was announced by the BCCI in a media release on Thursday. After…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"cricketnirvana","author_link":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/author\/cricketnirvana\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":2,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":160,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":2,"category_count":160,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":2,"label":"News"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cricketnirvana.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}