Rajat Patidar to debut for India in Vizag Test as Sarfaraz Khan misses out

Madhya Pradesh and Royal Challengers Bangalore batter, Rajat Patidar, is making his Test debut for India in the second Test against England at the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium on Friday, February 2.

Former India pacer Zaheer Khan presented Patidar with his debut Test cap and shared a few words of encouragement with him.

Patidar comes into the XI on the back of two centuries that he scored against England Lions in a Tour match and the 1st Unofficial Test. He scored 111 in the tour game and backed it up with 151 in the first unofficial Test. The right-handed batter has accumulated 4000 runs in the 55 first-class games that he has played in his career thus far.

The 30-year-old batter pipped Sarfaraz Khan to make it to the playing XI.

While Patidar averages 45.97 in the first-class arena, Sarfaraz has an average of a whopping 69.85 in the same circuit and has been scoring runs at an unparalleled consistency lately. Sarfaraz has played 45 first-class games and aggregated 3912 runs in his young career.

Notably, Patidar has big boots to fill on debut as he comes in place of KL Rahul. Rahul scored 86 runs in the first innings of the Hyderabad Test and was ruled out of the 2nd Test after he complained of a right quadriceps pain. Patidar would like to make the most out of the opportunity and give the team management some headache once Rahul regains his fitness and is available to play again. 

India’s playing XI:

Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Rajat Patidar, Shreyas Iyer, Srikar Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Mukesh Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav

England’s playing XI:

Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes (wk), Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, James Anderson