The BCCI on Friday (January 12) announced the 16-member India squad for the first two Tests of the upcoming five-match series against England at home.

The first two Tests will take place in Hyderabad (January 25-29) and Visakhapatnam (February 2-6), before the teams move to Rajkot (February 15-19), Ranchi (February 23-27) and Dharamsala (March 7-11).

Dhruv Jurel earned his maiden call-up as a back-up wicketkeeping option as Ishan Kishan, who opted out the recently held South Africa Test series citing personal reasons, has not been named.

KL Rahul and KS Bharat are the two other designated wicketkeepers in the team, which will be led by Rohit Sharma.

Test specialists Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane continue to be overlooked as the rest of the batting line-up wears a similar look that toured South Africa.

Avesh Khan has been added to the pace attack led by vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah. Mohammed Siraj and Mukesh Kumar are the other fast-bowling options.

After the squad announcement, Mumbai Indians (MI) posted a creative on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), in which they didn’t show Rohit Sharma’s face despite him being part of the same IPL franchise. Instead, the creative featured KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Jasprit Bumrah.

MI’s decision to leave out Rohit didn’t go down well with the fans, who wondered if the five-time IPL champions sacked their former captain from the poster as well.

Here are the reactions:

Notably, Mumbai Indians abruptly removed Rohit Sharma as their captain last month. All-rounder Hardik Pandya would be succeeding Rohit, who led MI to five IPL titles in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020.

This move came less than a month after Pandya’s high-profile trade from GT to MI worth INR 15 crore. It was an all-cash deal, making Hardik the first title-winning captain to be traded in IPL.