India’s limited overs specialist Suresh Raina has been named as the captain of the Uttar Pradesh team for the upcoming season of their Ranji Trophy. They will play their first opener against Railways beginning here on Friday.

Raina played his last ODI in October 2015 against South Africa and he was even overlooked for the upcoming T20I series against Australia. Earlier, he led the India Blue team for Duleep Trophy 2017 as well.

India’s most coveted first-class tournament, Ranji Trophy is scheduled to start on Friday, with 28 participating teams, who will play 91 games, for deciding the champion. UP will begin their campaign against Railways in Lucknow on October 6.

UP Squad:

Suresh Raina (captain), Shivam Chaudhary, Himanshu Asnora, Rinku Singh, Akchdeep Nath, Eklavya Dwivedi, Umang Sharma, Almas Shaukat, Saurabh Kumar, Zeeshan Ansari, Deependra Pandey, Ankit Rajput, Praveen Kumar, Kartik Tyagi, Imtiyaz Ahmad, Israr Azim and Dhruv Pratap Singh.