The Indian batting mainstay Rohit Sharma and Ajikya Rahane have been named in the Mumbai squad for the offseason camp for season 2017/18. Aditya Tare has been retained as the captain of the side, due to the main reason that both the senior players will be absent for the most part of the season due to various international assignments proposed in the upcoming months.
Shardul Thakur, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shreyas Iyer, Abhishek Nayar are other few of the key players named in the team. Nayar’s inclusion in the squad means that senior member of the team will again be the main member for another season.
Young prodigies Prithvi Shaw and Armaan Jaffer have also made it to the list. Shaw made his Ranji debut for Mumbai in the semi-final against Tamil Nadu in the last season and became the first ever batsman for Mumbai since Amol Muzumdar to score a century on debut, an event which occurred after a period of more than 20 years. Riding on a century from Shaw, Mumbai was able to defeat Tamil Nadu in the semi-final to get close to the title but lost the final to Gujarat when the Parthiv Patel-led side chased down a total of 312, with the skipper himself playing an innings of 143.
Mumbai will be going in the season with a totally overhauled backroom staff. Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) recently replaced Milind Rege with Ajit Agarkar as the head of the selection committee. They also brought in Sameer Dighe as the coach of the side, dropping Chandrakant Pandit, who carried the team to the final of Ranji Trophy twice in two year’s during his stint, with Mumbai winning the cup in his first year as coach.
Dileep Vegasarkar, the former India captain and vice president of Mumbai Cricket Association has already expressed surprise over this move, calling it an anti-Mumbai cricket decision.
Here is the list of players announced by MCA for the off-season camp for 2017-18 –
|