India Red received a double blow as their two-star players in the form of captain Abhinav Mukund and all-rounder K Gowtham has been ruled out of the ongoing Duleep Trophy as confirmed by their stand-in captain Dinesh Karthik on Tuesday.

The captain of the India Red team Abhinav Mukund, who missed the first match of the Duleep Trophy against India due to dengue will miss the rest of the matches as he has not recovered yet from his illness. He has been replaced by Mumbai’s left-handed opening batsman Akhil Herwadkar. Karthik who was the stand-in captain of the India Red in the first match will continue to lead the side.

The Karnataka all-rounder, K Gowtham who was the star in the first innings taking a five wickets haul in the first match of the campaign fell ill on Day 4 and couldn’t take the field on the penultimate day of the match.  He will not take part in India Red’s next match against India Blue starting from September 13 although he was a part of the playing XI of Belagavi Panthers that took part in the Karnataka Premier League against Bellary Tuskers on Tuesday. Mumbai born left-arm spinner Vijay Gohil will replace the talented all-rounder for the remainder of the series.

The first of the two four day practice match against New Zealand which is scheduled to start from September 23 overlaps with the final of the Duleep Trophy which will begin from September 25. As many as eleven players were selected for the Duleep Trophy and India A squads including K Gowtham.  Priyank Panchal, R Samarth, Sudip Chatterjee, Ankit Bawne, Karun Nair, Rishabh Pant, Shahbaz Nadeem, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj and Ankit Rajpoot are the other ten players.

India pacer Ishant Sharma, who was initially selected in the India Blue squad, has been replaced by Chhattisgarh pacer Pankaj Rao. Tamil Nadu batsman Kaushik Gandhi, who was named in India Blue, has been shifted to the India Green squad.

Updated Squads:

India Red: Gahlaut Rahul Singh, Priyank Panchal, Sudip Chatterjee, Ishank Jaggi, Dinesh Karthik (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Baba Indrajith, Vijay Gohil, Karn Sharma, Basil Thampi, Ashok Dinda, Chama Milind, Prithvi Shaw, Siddarth Kaul, Akhil Herwadkar

India Blue: Suresh Raina (c), Samit Gohel, Srikar Bharat, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Manoj Tiwary, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar, Ishan Kishan (wk), Jayant Yadav, Bhargav Bhatt, Pankaj Rao, Ankit Rajpoot, Sagun Kamat, Jaydev Unadkat

India Green: Murali Vijay, Ravikumar Samarth, Prashant Chopra, Varun Aaron, Karun Nair, Ankit Bawne, Parthiv Patel(c/wk), Shahbaz Nadeem, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj, Mayank Dagar, Nitin Saini, Aniket Choudhary, Kaushik Gandhi