CHENNAI: India batter Rajat Patidar will lead Central Zone in the upcoming Duleep Trophy while Tilak Varma has been named as captain of South Zone. The zonal first-class tournament will be played at the BCCI Centre of Excellence from August 23 to September 10.
Tilak, the Hyderabad batter, will lead the South team with senior Andhra batter Ricky Bhui as his deputy. Meanwhile, senior Karnataka batter is also named in the squad which includes his state teammate R Smaran. Hyderabad's K Himateja are also part of the squad. From Tamil Nadu, N Jagadeesan is named as the keeper.
For Central Zone, Rinku Singh has been named as Patidar's deputy while off-spinner Saransh Jain has also been added to the squad. However, Jain is expected to miss the initial part of the tournament as he is a part of the India Test squad for the Sri Lanka tour which will go on till August 27.
Jain is tipped to make his Test debut at Galle since off-spin all-rounder Washington Sundar was ruled out of the first match. The first Test starts on August 15 at the Galle International Stadium, and the second Test will begin in Colombo from August 23.
South Zone: Tilak Varma (Captain), Ricky Bhui (Vice-Captain), Abhinav Tejrana, SK Rasheed, K Himateja, R Smaran, N Jagadeesan, Karun Nair, T Thyagarajan, Shreyas Gopal, K Sai Teja, T Vijay, V Kaverappa, Aman Khan.
Central Zone: Rajat Patidar (captain), Rinku Singh (vice-captain), Aryan Juyal (wicketkeeper), Saransh Jain, Aman Mokhade, Kunal Chandela, Zeeshan Ansari, Aryan Pandey, Arshad Khan, Ayush Pandey, Yash Rathod, Harsh Dubey, Kunal Singh Rathod (wk), Yash Thakur and Nachiket Bhute. Stand-by players: Amandeep Khare, Mayank Mishra, Saurabh Rawat, Bhargav Merai, Kunal Yadav and Kumar Kartikeya.