Jaiswal, Gaikwad get calls for West Indies tour

The national selectors, while picking India’s Test and ODI squads for the upcoming West Indies tour - the team for the five T20Is will be named later - dropped both Cheteshwar Pujara and Umesh Yadav from the side for the two-Test series in the Caribbean, which will be India’s first in the 2023-25 WTC cycle.
In-form openers Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ruturaj Gaikwad and seamer Mukesh Kumar were given maiden Test call-ups, while 32-year-old ace pacer Mohammed Shami has been rested from both Tests and ODIs in the Caribbean, keeping important assignments like the Asia Cup and World Cup later this year in mind.
Interestingly, Umesh’s replacement in the Test squad is Delhi pacer Navdeep Saini, who hasn’t played a Test for India since January 2021. The 30-year-old didn’t play a single game in the Ranji Trophy last season but was included in the Rest of India team for the Irani Cup tie against Madhya Pradesh in Gwalior, where he took four wickets. “He has impressed the selectors whenever he has bowled,” a source said.
In a big vote of confidence in their abilities, Maharashtra’s Gaikwad, who was unable to join the team in England due to his marriage, and Bengal’s Mukesh, who has 149 wickets in 38 first-class games, have been picked in both the Test and ODI teams. In what clearly seems like a game of musical chairs, middle-order batsman Suryakumar Yadav, who too was among the reserves for the WTC final, has been dropped from the 16-man Test squad. Andhra’s ’keeper-bat KS Bharat, who made just 5 & 23 must consider himself lucky to have survived the axe.
TEST SQUAD: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ajinkya Rahane (vc), KS Bharat (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat and Navdeep Saini.
ODI SQUAD: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Surya Kumar Yadav, Sanju Samson (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya (vc), Shardul Thakur, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Mohd. Siraj, Umran Malik, Mukesh Kumar.