The Indian batsman Manish Pandey will be leading the Karnataka team as he will be replacing R. Vinay Kumar for the remaining four matches of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Pandey has been released from national duty after India won the Asia Cup in the UAE on Friday. He was featured in India’s playing XI for only in the game against Afghanistan during the tournament, in which he managed to score just 8.
Karnataka is being forced to make this move having suffered three defeats from four matches in the domestic List A tournament so far. The defending champions are struggling in the bottom half of the table, with just 2 points against their name. If Karnataka loses to Vidarbha when the two sides meet on Sunday, they will be knocked out of the competition.
Manish Pandey has had a successful captaincy stint recently when he led India B to victory in the Quadrangular Series involving Australia A and South Africa A. Talking about the same, KSCA Secretary R. Sudhakar Rao said, “We wanted to build a team for the future. This is only for the Vijay Hazare Trophy. The selectors wanted to see how he does.”
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In the squad that was announced on Friday, wicketkeeper-batsman CM Gautam and all-rounder Stuart Binny have also been benched. However, Rao didn’t accept that it was due to the duo’s poor form of late, and simply mentioned that it was to ‘give them a break.’
Mayank Agarwal, Karun Nair, and Prasidh Krishna have been roped into the Board President’s XI that will play West Indies in a warm-up fixture ahead of the 2-match Test series. The trio hence does not figure in the revised Karnataka squad. Meanwhile, batsman Anirudha Joshi, all-rounder Mir Kaunain Abbas and paceman T. Pradeep have been given the nod.
Karnata squad for remaining Vijay Hazare Trophy matches: Manish Pandey (C); R. Vinay Kumar, R. Samarth, Anirudha Joshi, Pavan Deshpande, K. Gowtham, Shreyas Gopal, A. Mithun, Mir Kaunain Abbas, J. Suchith, Abhishek Reddy, T. Pradeep, M.G. Naveen, B.R. Sharath, Sharath Srinivas.
