India internationals Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer are going to miss the next round of the Ranji Trophy for Mumbai in the lead up to the England ODI series that follows early next month. While the likes of Virat Kohli and KL Rahul will feature in the next round that begins on January 30, the Mumbai trio had already played the previous round, which Kohli and Rahul didn’t, and Iyer played almost the entire domestic season, that included the two white-ball tournaments as well. The ODI series against England starts on February 6 in Nagpur, four days after the scheduled end of the last Ranji Trophy round.
Rohit and Jaiswal – who also open together in Tests – opened for Mumbai against Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) when they returned to domestic cricket for the previous round after the BCCI’s new guidelines mandated playing domestic cricket. The board’s directive had come after India’s consecutive series losses against New Zealand and Australia that cost the team a World Test Championship final berth, especially with India’s batting unit failing to put up impressive scores. Rohit, especially, has been among the poorest of the lot, scoring just 164 runs from his last 15 Test innings to average a dismal 10.93 this season. His fortunes didn’t change when he batted for Mumbai against J&K as he scored just 3 and 28 in the game.
Jaiswal too registered low scores of 4 and 26 although he had a much better Test season, scoring two half-centuries and a century in Australia after four fifties at home.
Iyer, on the other hand, has been Mumbai’s top-scorer this Ranji season. He made two centuries to tally 480 runs from seven innings and average 68.57. He also struck two unbeaten centuries in the recently-concluded 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy and struck at 188.52 for his 345 runs in the victorious 20-over Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
The squad for the final league game against Meghalaya sees the return of batter Angkrish Raghuvanshi and allrounders Atharva Ankolekar and Suryansh Shedge, who was the Player of the Match in the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Mumbai are likely go to back to the young opening combination of Raghuvanshi and 17-year-old Ayush Mhatre, who has kicked off his maiden domestic season with a stellar record of four centuries and two half-centuries in 18 innings across first-class and List A formats so far.
Mumbai are the defending champions and are in a tough spot to make the Ranji knockouts, placed third in the Group A table behind J&K and Baroda. Their last game against Meghalaya is a must win.
Ajinkya Rahane (capt), Ayush Mhatre, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Amogh Bhatkal, Siddhesh Lad, Akash Anand (wk), Hardik Tamore (wk), Suryansh Shedge, Shardul Thakur, Shams Mulani, Tanush Kotian, Mohit Avasthi, Sylvester D’Souza, Royston Dias, Shreyas Gurav, Atharva Ankolekar
