Mumbai: India captain Rohit Sharma along with his teammates Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer will miss Mumbai’s upcoming Ranji Trophy clash against Meghalaya in a must-win clash starting Thursday.
Ajinkya Rahane-led Mumbai are currently placed third, behind Jammu and Kashmir and Baroda, in Group A with 22 points in six matches. They suffered a five-wicket loss against J&K on Rohit’s return to domestic cricket.
The trio of Rohit, Jaiswal and Iyer will prepare for the upcoming ODI series against England starting 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, partnered at the top for Mumbai in their previous Ranji Trophy match. Their return to domestic cricket followed the BCCI’s new guidelines mandating players to participate in domestic competitions. This directive came after India’s consecutive Test series defeats to New Zealand and Australia, which ended their hopes of making the third successive World Test Championship final, largely due to the batting unit’s struggles.
Rohit has been particularly out of form, scoring just 164 runs in his last 15 Test innings at an average of 10.93 this season. His struggles continued for Mumbai, where he managed just 3 and 28 against J&K. Jaiswal also had modest scores of 4 and 26 but had a better Test season, with a century and two half-centuries in Australia after scoring four fifties at home.
Iyer, in contrast, has been Mumbai’s standout performer this Ranji season, amassing 480 runs in seven innings at an average of 68.57, including two centuries. He also impressed in white-ball cricket, scoring two unbeaten hundreds in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and 345 runs at a strike rate of 188.52 during Mumbai’s victorious Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy campaign.
Mumbai will miss allrounder Shivam Dube, who joined the India T20I squad after the J&K game.
For their final league match against Meghalaya, Mumbai welcome back batter Angkrish Raghuvanshi and all-rounders Atharva Ankolekar and Suryansh Shedge, the Player of the Match in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy final. They are likely to revert to the young opening duo of Raghuvanshi and 17-year-old Ayush Mhatre, who has had an impressive start to his domestic career with four centuries and two half-centuries in 18 first-class and List A innings.
Mumbai squad: Ajinkya Rahane (c), 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.
