The selectors have announced the squad for Sri Lanka Test series, which will be played from November 16 to December 6. Kolkata will host the first game of the three-match Test series. Nagpur and Delhi will host the rest of the matches respectively.
Murali Vijay and Ishant Sharma have been included in the team for the first two Tests and Abhinav Mukund missed to retain his position. Vijay got injured before Sri Lanka series, which led his exclusion and brought Shikhar Dhawan in the squad, who grabbed that opportunity with both hands and notched up two tons.
Also, spin twin of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have a comeback in the Test team after missing all of the limited-over action throughout this home season. They last played for India in the Test series against Sri Lanka and then missed the rest of white ball cricket since then.
Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Shami will be the spearhead of the pace battery against Sri Lanka. They are also coming back after missing a lot of limited overs cricket. Both of them only featured in one ODI game, which came against Australia in Bengaluru.
India is number one in the Test ranking and last played a Test series in Sri Lanka. The visitors are fresh from their series whitewash over Pakistan by 2-0 in UAE.
Squad for first two Tests: Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Hardik Pandya, Rohit Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar.