Vijay Hazare Trophy: Dropped From Test Side, KL Rahul Named Karnataka's Vice-Captain, Manish Pandey To Lead

Dropped from the Test team for the upcoming series against South Africa, KL Rahul has been appointed Karnataka’s vice-captain for the first three matches of upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy 2019/20. He will be playing under Manish Pandey, who is a part of the T20I squad along with his deputy at Karnataka.

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KL Rahul was dropped from the Test side after a string of poor run over past one year. In West Indies, he did have a good start but could not convert it into a big one.

Sourav Ganguly, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul
KL Rahul (Credits – Getty)

The right-handed batsman was replaced by Shubman Gill in the Test squad, who will be the reserved opener to Mayank Agarwal and Rohit Sharma. Rahul is a part of the T20I squad but hasn’t got a chance.

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Pandey, who was appointed Karnataka’s captain last year, will continue to lead the team. He replaced R Vinay Kumar as the state’s captain last year. Pandey made his comeback to India’s limited-overs side after World Cup 2019 and is expected to be given a long run before India ink on middle-order batsmen.

Mayank Agarwal has not been selected as he is a part of the Test squad. Apart from Agarwal, Karnataka will also miss out on the services of Karun Nair.

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He is a part of Board President’s XI squad for the three-day fixture against South Africa that will be played before the Test series. He will be back in the side after the first three matches of the tournament.

India U-19 cricketer Devdutt Padikkal, who played five Ranji Trophy matches last season, has also been named in the squad and is expected to make his List A debut. He was bought by Royal Challengers Bangalore last year at his base price of Rs 20 Lakh.

The Karnataka’s line-up is star-studded with likes of Krishnappa Gowtham, Shreyas Gopal and Jagadeesha Suchith. In the pace bowling department, Abhimanyu Mithun will team up with Prasidh Krishna and Ronit More.

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Karnataka will kick off their campaign against Hyderabad on September 24. They will later face likes of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Mumbai, Saurashtra, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.