Ishan Kishan, the East Zone captain, will not be playing in the Duleep Trophy 2025. The 27-year-old wicketkeeper-batter was appointed captain of East Zone a few weeks ago but will now miss the six-team competition starting from August 28 in Bengaluru. Aashirwad Swain, a 20-year-old Odisha wicketkeeper, has been named as his replacement.
Odisha Cricket Association shared the news on X: Odisha’s wicketkeeper-batter Aashirwad Swain has been selected in the East Zone team for Duleep Trophy, replacing Ishan Kishan! He will play alongside Sandeep Pattnaik in the team and Swastik Samal has been named as standby player.
Since his debut on March 14, 2021, Ishan Kishan has played 2 Tests, 27 ODIs and 32 T20Is for India. His last competitive game was for Nottinghamshire against Somerset from June 29 to July 2. In that game he scored 77 runs batting at number 6. As of now there is no reason stated for Kishan’s absence in the upcoming tournament.
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With Kishan out, Bengal batter Abhimanyu Easwaran is expected to take over as captain of the East Zone team. The 29-year-old right-handed batter was named as Kishan’s second-in-command for the Duleep Trophy. Easwaran has a lot of experience having scored 7841 runs in 103 first-class matches.
East Zone will play North Zone in the first quarterfinal match of Duleep Trophy 2025 at BCCI Centre of Excellence Ground in Bengaluru from August 28 to 31. Shubman Gill will captain the North Zone team which will also include Yash Dhull, Arshdeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Anshul Kamboj and Yudhvir Singh Charak.
East Zone squad: Abhimanyu Easwaran, Aasirwad Swain (WK), Sandeep Patnaik, Virat Singh, Denish Das, Sridam Paul, Sharandeep Singh, Kumar Kushagra, Riyan Parag, Utkarsh Singh, Manishi, Suraj Sindhu Jaiswal, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep and Mohammed Shami
Standbys: Mukhtar Hussain, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Swastik Samal, Sudip Kumar Gharami and Rahul Singh
