Boys for the World

Mumbai, December 2

Uttar Pradesh batsman Priyam Garg will lead defending champions India in the next year’s U-19 ICC Cricket World Cup after the Indian cricket board (BCCI) named him captain of the 15-member squad for the tournament to be held in South Africa. 

BCCI’s junior national selection committee today named the squad for the tournament to be held from January 17 to February 9. The 19-year-old Garg, a right-handed top-order batsman, has a First-Class double hundred and a List A century to his name. He was part of the India C team that finished runners-up in the Deodhar Trophy. He hit 74 runs against India B in the final last month. In the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy season, Garg was the second-highest run-scorer for Uttar Pradesh with a tally of 814 at an average of 67.83. This performance featured two hundreds, including a career-best 206.

Another player to watch out for would be the 17-year-old Yashasvi Jaiswal. The Mumbai batsman became the youngest to hit a List A double-century during the Vijay Hazare Trophy earlier this year. He averaged 112.80 with three hundreds and a half-century during the season.

All-rounder Divyansh Joshi, who is from Greater Noida and studies in Dehradun was first spotted while batting for Mizoram in the Vinoo Mankad Trophy. 

The 13th edition of the U-19 World Cup will be played among 16 teams, split into four groups. India are placed in Group A with first-time qualifiers Japan, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. The top-2 teams from each group will qualify for the Super League stage.

Ahead of the World Cup, the India U-19 team will travel to South Africa for three limited-overs matches against the Proteas U-19 side. This will be followed by a quadrangular series featuring South Africa U-19, India U-19, Zimbabwe U-19 and New Zealand U-19. Hyderabad’s CTL Rakshan will be the additional player in the squad for the South Africa tour and the quadrangular series. — PTI

• 4 Title wins for India — the most successful team in the tournament till date. India won the last edition in 2018 when they beat Australia by eight wickets in the final and remained unbeaten in the tournament

• Squad: Yashasvi Jaiswal (Mumbai), Tilak Varma (Hyderabad), Divyaansh Saxena (Mumbai), Priyam Garg (Captain) (UP), Dhruv Chand Jurel (vice-captain & wicketkeeper) (UP), Shashwat Rawat (Baroda), Divyansh Joshi (Mizoram), Shubhang Hegde (Karnataka), Ravi Bishnoi (Rajasthan), Akash Singh (Rajasthan), Kartik Tyagi (UP), Atharva Ankolekar (Mumbai), Kumar Kushagra (wk) (Jharkhand), Sushant Mishra (Jharkhand), Vidyadhar Patil (Karnataka)