The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the 16-member squad for the first two Test matches against Australia. The selectors have retained the squad selected for the one-off the Test match against Bangladesh with Mohammed Shami and Amit Mishra missing out. Shami is yet to recover from the knee injury which he suffered during the Test series against England whereas there was no news on the fitness of Amit Mishra.
The Tamil Nadu skipper Abhinav Mukund has retained his place as the third opener with KL Rahul and Murali Vijay being the other two.

Ishant Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav will be performing the fast bowling duties with Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja retaining their place in the squad. The Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav has also been named as the fourth spinner, with Jayant Yadav also having his name in the team as the third spinner.

Also, there was no news regarding Rohit Sharma, who was expected to make a comeback for the last leg of the long home season for the Indian team. There might be a case when selectors would have asked him to play domestic cricket so as to prove his fitness to be selected in the squad. Rohit might play Vijay Hazare Trophy for Mumbai that starts from February 25.

The Test series between the two countries will start from February 23 with the first Test match to be played In Pune. Bengaluru, Ranchi and Dharamsala will be hosting the next three games of the series.

India squad for the first two Test matches: KL Rahul, Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (Captain), Ajinkya Rahane, Karun Nair, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Jayant Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Abhinav Mukund, Hardik Pandya, Wriddhiman Saha (WK).