Indian cricketer Shreyas Iyer is all set to play for Mumbai in the red-ball Buchi Babu tournament ahead of India's busy Test season. The Buchi Babu tournament is a pre-season red-ball tournament, which is set to kick off on August 15 in Tamil Nadu.
While the tournament will commence in a couple of days, Iyer will be available to play from August 27. He will be playing only one match. The 29-year-old will be playing under the captaincy of three Test-old capped Sarfaraz Khan in the four-day red-ball tournament. He will be joined by T20I stalwart and shortest-format captain Suryakumar Yadav in the domestic tournament.
"Shreyas Iyer will play for Mumbai at the Buchi Babu Invitational tournament organized by the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. He will be playing vs Jammu & Kashmir from 27th August at Coimbatore," MCA joint secretary Deepak Patil said in a release.
Iyer is currently out of the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) central contract list. He played two of five Test matches against England earlier this year while missing the rest due to a long-standing back issue. He also missed a few first-class matches for Mumbai but made a return in the semifinals and the finals of the Ranji Trophy tournament earlier in March.
He made a return to the Indian set-up in the three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka, where, just like many other Indian batters, the KKR skipper could not make an impact too. He returned with the scores of 23, 7 and 8 in those three games.
India have a busy Test season ahead with 10 matches lined-up in the next few months. The Men in Blue have to play two Tests against Bangladesh, three against New Zealand and five against Australia till early January.
With only a handful of spots up for grabs in the Test side, Shreyas will look to put his best foot forward in the Buchi Babu tournament to stake a claim for one of the places.
