NEW DELHI: The opening Test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) beginning at the Optus Stadium in Perth on Friday will see two players making their red-ball debut for India, as the duo of fast bowler Harshit Rana and seam-up allrounder Nitish Kumar Reddy received their debut caps ahead of the toss.
FOLLOW LIVE: Perth Test, Day 1
Reddy received his his cap from Virat Kohli, while Ravichandran Ashwin presented it to Rana, for whom it is the first international match as well. Reddy made his India debut in a T20I against Bangladesh on October 6, and before the month added, the 21-year-old had punched his ticket to Australia for the BGT.
Shortly after that, India’s stand-in captain Jasprit Bumrah won the toss at the Optus Stadium and opted to bat first. Rohit Sharma is unavailable for the first Test.
What augurs well for the 21-year-old Reddy is that he was in Australia early with the India ‘A’ side for the four-day matches against the Australian ‘A’ team and is well acclimatized to the conditions. However, he didn’t do much of note in the two unofficial Tests.
Reddy has so far played 23 first-class matches since making his Ranji Trophy debut in 2020. Besides scoring 779 runs in 39 innings, including a hundred and two fifties, he has taken 56 wickets.
The 22-year-old Rana, a right-arm fast bowler from Delhi, made his Indian Premier League (IPL) debut before playing his first first-class match for Delhi, which was in December 2022.
Rana was one of the key performers for Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL triumph earlier this year. Rana took 19 wickets in the tournament.
In 10-first-class matches so far, Rana has taken 43 wickets at an average of 24.00 with his best effort in an innings being 7 for 45. He is also a handy batter lower down the order, which shows in his 469 runs in 14 first-class innings, including a hundred and two fifties.
Playing XIs
Australia: Nathan McSweeney, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey (wk), Pat Cummins (c), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood
India: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana, Jasprit Bumrah (c), Mohammed Siraj
