Rahul Dravid To Miss U-19 Asia Cup, WV Raman To Take Charge

Rahul Dravid, the India Under-19 and India A head coach, will reportedly miss the upcoming U-19 Asia Cup 2018, set to be played in Bangladesh from September 29 to October 7.

According to The Times of India, WV Raman will take over the coaching duties for the competition. Well, this will not be the first time Raman has stepped in absence of Dravid to take charge of the colts.

Last year, he was the in-charge of the team when Dravid missed the tour of England due to India A commitments. This year as well, Dravid had to miss the Sri Lanka tour as he was with the ‘A’ team in England. Raman performed the coaching duties on both the occasions and again.

India are placed in group A with Nepal, United Arabia Emirates and Afghanistan. India start their campaign against Nepal Under-19 on Saturday. The Boys in Blue will then lock horns against United Arabia Emirates (September 30) and Afghanistan (October 2) in their following league stage games. The top two teams from Group A and B will face each other in semi-finals.

The final of the tournament will be played on October 7 at Sharjah Cricket Association Stadium, Sharjah.

India, the three-time winners of the competition, will be looking to do well in the upcoming edition after a poor outing in the last one. After winning all the first three editions, India crashed out of the last edition at the group stage. India had suffered humiliating defeats against Nepal U19 and Bangladesh U-19.

Afghanistan are the defending champions. They had defeated Pakistan in the final to lift their first major trophy.

Meanwhile, the report in TOI also suggests that junior selectors Gyanendra Pandey and Amit Sharma could not board the flight to Bangladesh on Thursday.

Here is India’s squad for the Under-19 Asia Cup:

Devdutt Padikkal, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Pavan Shah (captain), Anuj Rawat, Yash Rathod, Ayush Badoni, Nehal Wadhera, Siddharth Desai, Harsh Tyagi, Yatin Mangwani, Mohit Jangra, Sameer Choudhary, Rajesh Mohanty