The Indian fast bowler, Navdeep Saini will be making his debut in the longest format of the game, in the third Test of the ongoing four-match series against Australia. On Wednesday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Saini has been included in the playing XI, which was announced a few hours back.
The 28-year-old was seen training in the nets, in a video uploaded on BCCI’s official Twitter handle ahead of the much-awaited game which is scheduled to commencing on Thursday at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). Captioning the video, BCCI wrote: “Fast & furious! @navdeepsaini96 is all set for his Test debut at the @scg tomorrow. #TeamIndia #AUSvIND”.
Fast & furious! @navdeepsaini96 is all set for his Test debut at the @scg tomorrow. #TeamIndia 💪😎🙌 #AUSvIND pic.twitter.com/gHMn4oUOk3
— BCCI (@BCCI) January 6, 2021
The veteran Indian opener, Rohit Sharma will be making his maiden appearance in the ongoing four-match Border-Gavaskar trophy in Australia. He was also named as the deputy skipper for a remaining couple of games.
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Rohit will be replacing Mayank Agarwal at the top of the order, with the latter opening the innings in the first couple of Test at the Adelaide Oval and Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Agarwal only managed to register the scores of 17, 9, 0, and 5 in the opening two Tests.
On the other hand, Saini has been included in place of Umesh Yadav, who has been ruled out of the series after suffering a calf muscle injury during Day 3 of the Boxing Day Test. The rest of the line-up remains the same as that for the Melbourne Test.
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India XI for the third Test: Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane (capt), Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah, Navdeep Saini.
