India has made two changes to their squad for the 2025 Champions Trophy with star pacer Jasprit Bumrah set to miss the tournament. Harshit Rana has been named in the Indian team for the major tournament. Varun Chakravarthy has also been added to the squad in place of batter Yashasvi Jaiswal.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) made the decision minutes before the deadline for all teams to submit their final squad. After Tuesday (February 11), teams were allowed to make changes to the team if approved by the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) technical committee.
BCCI revealed that Bumrah is suffering from a lower back injury. He suffered the injury during the fifth Test of the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) at Sydney last month.
Chakravarthy’s inclusion means that the Indian team now have five spinners in the team including two wrist spinner and three all-rounders. India has only one reserve batter which will be one of the two wicket-keeper batters between KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant. There is no specialist opener in the squad apart from the first-choice pair of Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill, who are the team’s captain and vice-captain.
The BCCI also announced that Jaiswal, Mohammed Siraj, and Shivam Dube as the reserve players but they will not travel to Dubai unless required.
The decision to include Harshit over Siraj is a bold call as the youngster made his ODI debut last week while Siraj was not ranked World No.1 in the format only 18 months ago.
