Prasad called for a huge Indian contingent due to mandatory 14-day COVID-19 quarantine period.
The CA CEO has already confirmed a mandatory 14-day quarantine period for the visiting Indian team and former chief selector MSK Prasad thinks that it might be a good idea to have at least a 26-strong squad for the tour, combining the main and A teams.
Pakistan are travelling with a squad of 29 (including white-ball specialists) while the West Indies have 26 on their roster in order to maintain the COVID-19 protocols in England.
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"The team management and seniors will have an opportunity to look at the youngsters who are knocking the doors. In this process, you can also monitor those players who can be the potential guys for different spots in future. Since we cannot trust the net bowlers about their exposure to COVID, it would be ideal to go with a large contingent as we can be assured of all the players' safety as they will be in a bio-secure environment," Prasad reasoned.
"In case someone tests COVID positive, then the players from this contingent can be picked as they would have served the mandatory quarantine period," he added.
"Even for our main bowlers, they will have fresh batsmen to bowl at unlike the same bunch of first team boys. For instance, Shreyas Iyer is very aggressive and at times can be unorthodox. So, he might offer variety of skills which the Australian batsman might possess. "On the other hand, a left-armer Khaleel Ahmed's presence will help in preparing for Mitchell Starc's angled deliveries," said Prasad.
Prasad also said that new selector Sunil Joshi will not have a reference point for choosing players as there has been no domestic cricket in India due to Coronavirus pandemic, hence a large squad is the need of the hour.
"The only tough part that we will be facing because of this large contingent is managing such a large pool of players. To provide quality practice sessions to all of them will also be a challenge," said Prasad.
Asked to put on the selector's hat one more time, the former India wicketkeeper picked up his choice of 26 players — a mix and match of Test, ODI and T20 specialists.
His picks:
Openers: Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul
Middle-order: Virat Kohli (captain), Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer
Wicketkeeper: Rishabh Pant, Wriddhiman Saha
Spinners: R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shahbaz Nadeem, Rahul Chahar, Kuldeep Yadav
All-rounder: Hardik Pandya
Pacers: Ishant Sharma, Mohammad Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Shardul Thakur
Purely white ball: Deepak Chahar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Krunal Pandya
(PTI inputs)