Colombo. Team India has started preparing for the Champions Trophy to be held next year. It will start the work of identifying its 15 players for the Champions Trophy before this tournament. Along with this, the priority of the team management will also be to decide on the wicketkeeper batsman of Team India.

Young wicketkeeper batsman Rishabh Pant has now returned to the team after recovering from the horrific car accident in December 2022, while KL Rahul played this responsibility well in Team India playing without him. He also proved himself well in this role in the ODI World Cup 2023. Now it will be interesting to see whether the new Indian team management under the leadership of Gautam Gambhir shows faith in Rahul like Rahul Dravid or he would like to give a chance to Pant.

In this series, all eyes will also be on captain Rohit Sharma and star batsman Virat Kohli, who will play a match for the first time after winning the T20 World Cup. The Indian team management will focus on preparing the right team combination without paying attention to the things happening outside. Because its focus will be on the Champions Trophy next year and then the 2027 ODI World Cup.

If Gambhir and captain Rohit decide to keep both batsmen Pant and KL Rahul in the playing XI, then they will have to consider how to fit Shreyas Iyer in the team, who has been performing well in 50 overs cricket. In this way, there is a competition between Rahul, Pant and Iyer for two places in the Indian batting order. If India keeps these three in the team, then it will have to go with five bowlers.

However, India will not want to take such a risk because Hardik Pandya is not playing in this series due to personal reasons. India can give a chance to either Shivam Dubey or Riyan Parag as the number six batsman.

Parag seems to have an upper hand in this as he also played the role of a bowler in the recently concluded T20 series against Sri Lanka. This player from Assam also performed well in the 50-over domestic competition Deoghar Trophy. On the other hand, Dubey, who played ODIs five years ago, played only one match in the T20 series against Sri Lanka and he did not bowl in that too.

Apart from this, Gambhir will also keep an eye on the performance of Rohit and Kohli as he has to prepare the team for the ODI World Cup to be held in 2027. Both these players have not played any ODI match since the World Cup final against Australia last year and they will be desperate to make a great comeback in the 50-over format.