Soon after the conclusion of the IPL 2023 season, Team India will depart for UK to face Australia in the World Test Championship (WTC) final.

Last month, the BCCI announced India’s 15-member squad for the WTC final but the board didn’t mention the standby players in its media release.

Now, a report published in TOI claims that Suryakumar Yadav is likely to fly to London as a standby for the marquee final.

Notably, Suryakumar was part of India’s squad for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia at home earlier this year. However, he failed to make a mark in the one opportunity he got and was dropped from the original Test squad.

“While it hasn’t been officially decided as yet, Surya was recently been told to keep his UK visa ready,” TOI quoted a BCCI source as saying.

As per the report, the need to include the middle-order batter as a standby emerged after KL Rahul sustained a thigh injury during the IPL 2023 clash between LSG and RCB on May 1.

Rahul will not take any further part in the remainder of the ongoing IPL season and is ruled out for the WTC final as well.

Earlier, it was reported by TOI that the likes of Sarfaraz Khan, Ishan Kishan, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Mukesh Kumar and Navdeep Saini are the standby players for the WTC final.

While Sarfaraz and Gaikwad are specialist batters, Saini and Kumar are pace-bowling options. On the other hand, Kishan is a wicketkeeper-batter.

The World Test Championship final is slated to be held at the Oval in London from June 7-11.

(With TOI Inputs)