Shubman Gill earns maiden Test call-up: The 19-year old has been called into the Test for the first time in his career.
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In a bid to release Hanuma Vihari and Mohammad Siraj to play for their respective sides in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy, BCCI have called in Manish Pandey and Shubman Gill as replacements for the two players. BCCI’s announcement had come in the morning, a day before the match.
Among the four substitutes (including Mohammad Shami and Mayank Agarwal), only Vihari and Siraj’s respective teams have qualified for the quarter-finals. Apparently, both of them will be locking horns against each other as Andhra and Hyderabad will place each other in the fourth quarter-final at Bengaluru tomorrow.
Vihari will lead Andhra whereas Siraj will take the new ball for Hyderabad tomorrow. Vihari has played four matches in the tournament so far, returning with scores of 27, 9, 7 and 2. On the other hand, Siraj had clinched five wickets in as many match played in this season. Both the team would be hoping their international recruits to turn the tables for them in the knockout match.
Rohit Sharma, vice-captain of the Indian limited-overs team, took the field for Mumbai in their first quarter-final match against Bihar today. Chasing a meagre total of 70 runs, Mumbai won the match by 9 wickets in the 13th over. Sharma, who opened the batting alongside Akhil Herwadkar (24), scored 33* (42) with the help of three fours and two sixes.
In the three innings that Pandey played for Karnataka in this season, he returned wth scores of 35, 43 and 67. Also in the Indian squad for the first two ODIs, he would be looking to play a match-winning innings to press his case for a spot in the national playing eleven.
Having scored 418 runs in seven matches at an average of 59.71 and a strike rate of 83.93, Gill was Punjab’s highest run-scorer in the tournament. Overall, he was the seventh highest in the tournament. Also the highest run-scorer for India in the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup 2018, getting the India call (with no more Test remaining in the series) must have been an overwhelming feeling for him.
Read some of the recent Twitter reactions on the Vijay Hazare Trophy below:
