Shikhar Dhawan replaces injured Murali Vijay for Sri Lankan tour

Murali Vijay’s wrist injury hasn’t subdued and India’s most trusted opener will have to miss out on the Sri Lankan tour, as he’ll undergo further rehabilitation in order to get back to full fitness.

Vijay was named in the Indian squad for the Sri Lankan tour but was in a lot of pain during a preparatory match, and hence the Indian team management decided to let Vijay continue rehabilitation.

Shikhar Dhawan, who last played a test match in October 2016 has been roped in, and will most likely slot into the openers’ role.

The Indian team is set to take on Sri Lanka in a 3 match Test Series, starting from 26th July and will be playing a practice game before that.

It would be interesting to see the combination that India goes with in Sri Lanka, as the wickets would assist spinners. We could very well see India’s spin-trio of Jadeja, Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav bowl in tandem.

The Indian team is currently enjoying a holiday period after being on the road since the IPL.

Ravi Shastri has been appointed as the head coach till the 2019 World Cup, and this Sri Lankan will be his first assignment. He needs to first sort out his backroom staff before getting into the thick of things.

Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri would also be taking decisions on what sort of combination the team would want to work with in Sri Lanka. Kohli has been using a mix of the 5 bowler and the 4 bowler strategy, but he settled into the 5 bowler one in the home test season, as Ashwin was batting beautifully at number 6.

He might be tempted to go in with the same in Sri Lanka

Indian squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Rohit Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, M Shami, Kuldeep Yadav, Abhinav Mukund

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Utkarsh Bhatla