Unfortunately team running out of reserves. Gill, KL Rahul, Siraj, Saini, Shardul, Natarajan, kuldeep, Tyagi,Saha all were reserved players. 3 of them (Gill,Siraj,Saini) already made their debut in the last 2 games . KL Rahul is already ruled out due to injury so they are left with Shardul, Natarajan, Tyagi (Fast bowlers) Kuldeep (Spinner) and only one batsman Shaw.
Haha After Mayank's Injury there are technically just Pujara, Ashwin and Rahane left in the team who would have been part of the A team if everyone was fit rest of all of them are reserves and all the time we were cursing how fiercly competitive a place in the team is but now this same thing is helping India as we hav so much of backups. BCCI's decisions of sending more than 30 players on the tour was such an intelligent decision. Otherwise we would have faced the bio-bubble problem with these player. Quite an far sighted decision.
Due to covid CA refused to provide net bowlers to Indian team, which was right call from the Aussie side in tough time. It forced BCCI to bring enough players and Blame the IPL for intensive workload/injuries but at the same time thanks the IPL for enough warm up as well, some short of practice for players, especially new guys ... Tour could have been cancelled if we had 18 Men squad.
Overall , i think departure of Kohli turned out to be blessing in disguise. Every player taking responsibility and showing character now. I hope they keep up the same mindset when he returns, may be Kohli should think about it and give players some space and stop putting pressure on them unnecessary.
~snip~
They should hire freelancers and protect the rest of the players so that they could come out and play the final match
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Lol
Only Australian players are eligible or they should try some from the BBL, may be bring Rashid Khan.
^^^ I would really love to see Natarajan make his debut, but then it depends on Damaadji. If he prefers Kuldeep Yadav for the final test, then Natarajan may need to wait some more time for his test debut. All that said, I have a feeling that India needs a left-arm pacer right now. It will add more variety to their pace attack, which is looking quite homogenous nowadays.
If Ashwin is fit to play then including Kuldeep doesn't make much sense on fast-bouncy track. Shashtri is nutjob but i guess he understand this clearly. They must be brainstorming on Saha's role though.
Check this:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/india-in-australia/india-vs-australia-held-back-in-oz-for-nets-washington-sundar-may-play-gabba-test-jasprit-bumrah-out/articleshow/80230619.cmsTOI is saying that Washington Sundar may make his debut. Officially he is not a part of the squad, but was asked to stay back in Australia after the ODI/T20I series. And there is still no confirmation regarding Jasprit Bumrah and Ravichandran Ashwin. As per the media, they are being considered as 50/50 probabilities. I don't think that including two spinners (Ashwin and Sundar) is a good idea. I would have rather included Natarajan.
The playing eleven, for now, is expected to be on the following lines: Shubhman Gill, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Rishabh Pant (WK), Mayank Agarwal / Prithvi Shaw, R Ashwin, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur.
They didn't include him in the squad yet so i am not sure if we should believe the unnamed source or not. No idea about Sundar's first class career but this doesn't look that bad. With this move Indian tail look okay as Ashwin,Sundar and Shardul can bat as well.
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