Defending champions and four-time title holders India announced their squad for the upcoming U-19 World Cup on Monday. BCCI made the team announcement official on its Twitter handle.
Four-time winner India announce U19 Cricket World Cup squad. Priyam Garg to lead the side. pic.twitter.com/VEIPxe2a2n
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 2, 2019
Uttar Pradesh’s Priyam Garg would be leading the 15 member Indian squad to South Africa. Wicketkeeper Dhruv Chand Jurel has been named as the vice-captain. Mumbai’s Yashasvi Jaiswal along with Divyansh Saxena, Uttarakhand’s Shashwat Rawat and Hyderabad’s Tilak Varma form the core of Indian batting in the selected squad. India is placed in Group A alongside New Zealand, Sri Lanka and first-time entrants to the tournament Japan.
India would start its campaign in the World Cup with the first game against the Island neighbors Sri Lanka on 19th January. India would then play against Japan on 21st January and would finish off the group stage with an encounter against New Zealand on 24th January.
National Cricket Academy (NCA) director and former India U-19 coach Rahul Dravid who coached the team that lifted the title in 2018 in New Zealand said that the selected squad has a good balance.
Dravid believes that the team this time is as good as the previous one, with plenty of depth and skill. The India U-19 reached the final in 2016 and won the tournament in 2018 during Dravid’s coaching tenure.
The 13th edition of the showpiece event in junior cricket that acts as a platform for identification of potential players is scheduled to be held from 17 January to 9 February 2020 in South Africa.
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The tournament would have 48 matches in total and would have three phases that is the group stages, quarter-finals, and semi-finals followed by the final title clash. The Indian squad for the tournament is as follows:
Priyam Garg (captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Divyaansh Saxena, Dhruv Chand Jurel (vice-captain and wk), Shashwat Rawat, Divyansh Joshi, Shubhang Hegde, Ravi Bishnoi, Akash Singh, Kartik Tyagi, Atharva Ankolekar, Kumar Kushagra (wk), Sushant Mishra, Vidyadhar Patil.
