Afghanistan and Ireland became the 11th and 12th Test nations as they received Test status from the International Cricket Council (ICC) in June 2017. Both the nations announced their inaugural Tests, as Ireland will play Pakistan in June and Afghanistan to play India in June of 2018.
For Afghanistan, it was a culmination of hard work of more than a decade, where they have become of the teams to watch out for in international circuit. Afghanistan made their World Cup debut in 2015 ICC World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and won their first WC match against Scotland. They then defeated eventual champions West Indies in the World T20 2016.
Afghanistan chose India for their inaugural Test, because of the help extended by India to Afghanistan in developing their cricket, even granting them the cricket ground in Greater Noida as their adopted home ground.
Now India will host Afghanistan at Bengaluru from June 14 for their very first Test match.
BCCI announced the India team squad to play at Bengaluru. It was confirmed earlier that regular India captain Virat Kohli will miss this Test match in order to play county cricket in England for Surrey. In his place, it was announced that Ajinkya Rahane will lead team India.
Along with Rahane, the likes of KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Wriddhiman Saha and Hardik Pandya were included in the side for the one-off Test.
Kohli, Bumrah, Rohit, Bhuvneshwar Kumar were not included in the squad for Afghanistan Test.
HERE IS THE INDIAN SQUAD FOR ONE-OFF TEST AGAINST AFGHANISTAN:
Ajinkya Rahane (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, M Vijay, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Karun Nair, Wridhhiman Saha, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Mohd Shami, Hardik Pandya, Ishant Sharma, Shardul Thakur
