IND Vs ENG: KL Rahul To Miss 3rd Test, Padikkal Named Replacement

India’s middle-order batsman KL Rahul is unavailable for the third Test against England in Rajkot due to injury. Devdutt Padikkal has been named as his replacement in the squad.

Rahul was expected to join the team on Monday, but he is still recovering at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru.

He missed the Visakhapatnam Test with a right quadriceps injury and was named in the squad for the last three Tests conditionally on his fitness.

Rahul is expected to rejoin the squad soon and will travel with the team to Ranchi for the fourth Test.

“Rahul has reached 90% of match fitness and is making good progress under the supervision of the BCCI Medical Team,” the BCCI said in a press release. “He will continue his recovery process at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru to be completely match-fit for the fourth and fifth Tests.”

Padikkal is getting his first call-up to the Test squad in the middle of a productive first-class season. The 23-year-old Karnataka batsman, who bats at No. 3 for his state team, recently scored 151 runs against Tamil Nadu.

This was his third hundred in the ongoing Ranji Trophy, and he also scored 105 against the England Lions in the second unofficial Test, where he opened the batting.

India has decided to overlook out-of-form Shreyas Iyer and veteran Cheteshwar Pujara, and they will have several promising young players to choose from in Rajkot.

The selectors have shown faith in Rajat Patidar, who made his debut in Visakhapatnam, and Sarfaraz Khan, who is likely to make his debut.

Here is the revised squad for the 3rd Test:

Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Sarfaraz Khan, Rajat Patidar, Ravindra Jadeja, KS Bharat (wk), Dhruv Jurel (wk), Axar Patel, R Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Devdutt Padikkal