The BCCI's Centre of Excellence (COE), led by VVS Laxman, has devised a roadmap following five home Test losses to South Africa in 2025 and New Zealand in 2024. Young players like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Ayush Mhatre are reportedly scheduled to play four-day red-ball matches in an intra-COE tournament in June and July.
According to a PTI report, 64 elite young cricket players, all under 25, will compete in the intra-COE event with the goal of identifying and building a supply chain to revitalize India's red-ball potential for the upcoming decade.
While India’s white-ball fortunes have reached new heights under head coach Gautam Gambhir, as they’ve won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2025 and the T20 World Cup 2026, India’s Test team has suffered embarrassment on the big stage. India is no longer invincible at home, and their goal of reaching the WTC 2027 final has become an uphill task.
The same PTI report also added that all coaches and national selectors have been told that the focus in the next year for most high-performance camps in Bengaluru will be to get the talent pool on track, with an eye on the near and distant future.
“The India Emerging side will comprise only U-25 players, and they will also constitute India A teams for shadow tours. The roadmap will be created keeping the senior chairman of selectors, Ajit Agarkar, and head coach Gautam Gambhir in the loop. Once the IPL ends, India U-19 and Emerging (U-25) will both tour Sri Lanka for four-day games. The squad will be selected based on Intra-COE tournament performances,” a BCCI source told PTI.
The goal is to choose 64 cricketers, who will then be divided into four squads of 16 each. Each team will play two four-day red-ball games at the COE, with various pitch conditions available to provide suitable match practice.
The junior selection committee, led by S. Sharath, will select 25 cricketers (U-23) from the 64, including players who played well in the Cooch Behar Trophy (U-19) and CK Nayudu Trophy (U-23) red-ball competitions.
The senior selection committee will select another 25 cricketers (U-23 and U-25) based on their performance in the Ranji Trophy, Vijay Hazare Trophy, and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. However, the players chosen from these competitions will be those who did not compete in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Aside from these 50 cricketers, there will be 14 more players, the majority of whom have appeared in the IPL, including Mhatre, Sooryavanshi, and Sameer Rizvi.
"The idea is to select 25 after the intra-COE tourney, and this core group of cricketers will represent both Emerging and India A in shadow tours. The BCCI brass and Team India management are pretty clear—even for U-19s, the focus for the next year has to be red ball," the source said.
(PTI inputs)
