Indian wicketkeeper batters KL Rahul and Dhruv Jurel will reportedly travel to Australia for the second unofficial Test against Australia A at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
A report in the news agency PTI claimed that Rahul and Jurel will fly to Australia for the unofficial Test from November 7 onwards to get game time ahead of the Border-Gavaskar series.
Notably, Jurel and Rahul were both part of the Indian squad for the New Zealand series and are also team for the high-octane BGT series. While Rahul played one Test in the 3-0 series loss to New Zealand, Jurel was on the bench for the complete series.
Jurel has not played a Test match since the England Test series earlier in the year, while Rahul was benched after a series of underwhelming performances coupled with Sarfaraz Khan's century in the first Test.
India A faced Australia A in the first unofficial Test in Mackay and went down to them by seven wickets. Asked to chase 226, captain Nathan McSweeney and Beau Webster led the way in the fourth innings. McSweeney scored 88, while Webster made 61 in an unbeaten 141-run stand for the fourth wicket.
Earlier, India A batted first and made 107, while the Aussies scored 195 in their reply. Led by Sai Sudharsan's century, India A made 312 in the second innings to set a decent target but that was not enough.
Both Jurel and Rahul were not part of the initial India A squad, which is being led by Ruturaj Gaikwad. The squad initially included only two players - Abhimanyu Easwaran and Nitish Reddy - who are part of both India A and India squads.
India A squad for the tour of Australia: Ruturaj Gaikwad (C), Abhimanyu Easwaran (VC), Sai Sudharsan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Devdutt Padikkal, Ricky Bhui, Baba Indrajith, Ishan Kishan (WK), Abishek Porel (WK), Mukesh Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed, Yash Dayal, Navdeep Saini, Manav Suthar, Tanush Kotian
India’s squad for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy: Rohit Sharma (C), Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant (WK), Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (WK), R Ashwin, R Jadeja, Mohd. Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar.
