Left-hand batter Sai Sudharsan, who recently had an outstanding IPL 2025 campaign with the Gujarat Titans, is set to make his Test debut for the Men in Blue in the first match of the series against England. He has been chosen over Abhimanyu Easwaran to make his debut for the Men in Blue and is likely to bat at the No.3 position.
Ahead of the match, the 23-year-old was handed his maiden Test cap by veteran India batter Cheteshwar Pujara, who himself has a fantastic record in Test cricket for India, scoring 7195 runs in 103 matches.
Sudharsan has already debuted for India in both the white-ball formats
Notably, Sudharsan has already made his debut for India in both ODIs and T20Is, playing three games in the former and a single game in the latter format. It will be interesting to see how he performs against England at Headingley where the pitch is known to favour the seamers.
The left-handed batter had a sensational IPL 2025 season with the bat and even finished as the top-scorer with 759 runs under his belt in 15 matches. He maintained a brilliant strike-rate and average of 156.17 and 54.21 respectively. On the back of these performances, Sudharsan was handed his India debut in the important assignment against England.
Notably, the young batter has previously played County cricket for Surrey in the 2023 and 2024 season so he does have an idea about the conditions in England. Despite that, this will arguably be the young batter's biggest match of his career so far.
England's playing XI for first Test: Ben Stokes (c), Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jamie Smith (WK), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir.
India's playing XI for first Test: KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna.