The discarded Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan will lead the Baroda Ranji Trophy squad in the upcoming season. All-rounder Deepak Hooda has been appointed as his deputy. Yusuf Pathan, Hardik Pandya are also part of Baroda squad, Krunal Pandya has been called for the first time in the first class squad.

Baroda team will kick off their campaign against Gujarat playing the first game of the tournament at Sawai Mansingh Stadium.

Last year Broda finished on the seventh position winning just 2 games out of 8 played by them, they suffered a defeat in 3 games and 3 games ended in a draw which was led to this team being kicked out off group stage only.

Captaincy to Irfan Pathan has surely come as a surprise to many as last year he just played 3 first class games. The team could ‘ve gone with his brother Yusuf Path who is a regular in first-class cricket, unlike Irfan. Also, under hs leadership, the Baroda team progressed to the final fo the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy. Surely, Yusuf would have a good choice rather than Irfan.

Baroda last won Ranji trophy in the year 2000/01 whereas ended as runner-up in 2010/11. Baroda is placed in group A which the strongest group in Ranji Trophy.

This year BCCI has introduced the concept of neutral venues according to which a team will play all the eight games on different venues with none of the te game played at their home venue.

The Baroda squad is as follows –

Irfan Pathan (C), Deepak Hooda (vice-captain), Yusuf Pathan, Munaf Patel, Hardik Pandya, Kedar Devdhar, Aditya Wagmode, Swapnil Singh, Dhiren Mistry, Krunal Pandya, Pinal Shah (wk), Gagandeep Singh, Sagar Malglorkar, Vishnu Solanky, Viraj Bhosle (wk).