Indian discarded batsman Suresh Raina will lead Uttar Pradesh in the first game of the Ranji Trophy. He was an automatic choice for the captain as he is the most experienced member on the side and also will be available for the season.
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Unlike the last season, we will see Raina playing the all the games as last year, he played just three Ranji games and skipped the full domestic season. Despite being given a place in the team for the three-match T20I series against England, Raina was dropped from the central contract list due to him skipping an almost full season. From then, he is yet to get an international call-up due to various reasons, with fitness being the top-most of them.
He has already failed yo-yo test twice in a period two months and the Ranji season will a test for him to keep himself fit in days games for nearly seven weeks.
Raina was in contention to find a place in the Indian team for T20I series against Australia, but a failure in Yo-Yo test again meant at the was not given a place in the team.
The UP side includes Praveen Kumar as well. His selection has come as a surprise as the fast bowler was not given a place on the probable list for Ranji Trophy but still found a favour.
Sarfraz Khan, who switched his base to UP from Mumbai before 2015/16 season, has not been selected as he has just returned to league cricket after recovering from an injury, which he suffered during IPL.
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Apart from Raina and Praveen, the success of the team will depend on the likes of Akshdeep Nath, Ankit Rajpoot and Eklavya Dwivedi.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep Yadav are expected to miss the full season due to international commitments.
The team will also miss out on the services of Piyush Chawla as well, who had switched his base to Gujarat a few months back.
Uttar Pradesh will face Railways in their first game of the season at their home ground in Lucknow from October 6 to 9.
Squad: Suresh Raina(c), Akshdeep Nath, Almas Shaukat, Himanshu Asnora, Deependra Pandey, Umang Sharma, Rinku Singh, Eklavya Dwivedi, Shivam Chaudhary, Saurabh Kumar, Imtiaz Ahmed, Praveen Kumar, Mohd Israr, Ankit Rajpoot, Dhruv Pratap Singh, Zeeshan Ansari.
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