The South Zone selectors have defied BCCI's directive and will not be adding contracted players to their squad for Duleep Trophy. This comes after the Indian cricket board had asked all the zones to include the national side's players in their respective squads for the domestic tournament.
According to a report by Cricbuzz, the South Zone selectors have decided to not follow BCCI's advisory and will continue with the same squad that they have picked. This means that state cricketers like KL Rahul, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Washington Sundar, all of whom recently featured for India in the Test series against England, will not be seen playing the Duleep Trophy.
The report further stated that the South Zone selectors feel that national selectors should not be involved in picking teams for zones and also suggested that the centrally contracted players can instead feature in India A matches or in Ranji Trophy.
“Kerala qualified for the Ranji Trophy final (for the first time in the competition’s history of 90 editions) and lost it narrowly. They had a remarkable season and their players deserved selection for the Duleep Trophy," a South Zone official was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
Tilak is the skipper of South Zone
Notably, the South Zone team will be led by Tilak Varma and they will be playing the semi-final of Duleep Trophy on September 4. They have directly made it to the semis as the finished as the runners-up in the previous edition of the tournament. The 15-member team features four cricketers from Kerala, three from Hyderabad, two each from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and one each from Goa and Pondicherry.
South Zone's squad for Duleep Trophy: Tilak Varma (c), Mohammed Azharuddeen (vc), Tanmay Agarwal, Devdutt Padikkal, Mohit Kale, Salman Nizar, Narayan Jagadeesan, Tripurana Vijay, R Sai Kishore, Tanay Thyagarajan, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Nidheesh MD, Ricky Bhui, Basil NP, Gurjapneet Singh, Snehal Kauthankar