India name rookie Gill in Test squad

NEW DELHI: Shubman Gill has won his first Test call up as India announced their cricket squad for the home series against South Africa.

The former Under-19 World Cup winner replaced KL Rahul from the team that went to the Caribbean recently, which means India will be trialing a new opening combination when the series starts on October 2.

Mayank Agarwal kept his spot at the top of the order but there has been a lot of speculation on who will partner him.

Rohit Sharma’s name had done the rounds in the lead-up to the squad being named — with pundits such as former captain Sourav Ganguly and former Indian Premier League team-mate Adam Gilchrist supporting his promotion up the Indian batting order.

Those cases were made on the basis of Rohit’s prolific form as India’s One-Day International and Twenty20 International opener, but he has only performed that role three times in his first-class career.

Nevertheless, chief selector MSK Prasad rubber-stamped the experiment on Thursday saying, “(We) want to give Rohit Sharma an opportunity to open the innings in Tests.”

This continues a lengthy second-coming for the 32-year-old, who last year said he had made peace with the start-stop nature of his Test career. It was 2010 when he was supposed to don the whites for the first time, but an ankle injury threw a spanner into those plans. He finally made that long-awaited debut three years later against West Indies and smashed back-to-back centuries, suggesting that he was more than ready for the step up to the longest format.

However, issues against the moving ball has restricted him to a mere 27 Test appearances, prompting him to go rather philosophical last May. “There’s limited time you have as a player and I have finished almost half of it. There’s no point in spending the remaining half thinking whether I’ll be picked or not. I am going forward with the theory of ‘whatever time I have, make it count’,” Rohit told PTI, referring to his below-par record in international red-ball cricket. Gill, meanwhile, has been banging the door down to India’s Test team for a while. In July, the 20-year-old had expressed his disappointment at not being selected for India’s tour of the West Indies, saying he expected to be there in at least one of the squads. He responded by scoring an unbeaten 204 off just 248 balls after coming in at 14 for 3 against West Indies A in the third four-day game. Earlier this week, captaining India A against South Africa A in Thiruvananthapuram, Gill scored 90 in the first innings.

India squad: Virat Kohli (captain), Mayank Agarwal, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper), Wriddhiman Saha (wicketkeeper), Ravichandaran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Shubman Gill.