Vijay Hazare trophy: Ashish Nehra to play 3 games for Delhi

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New Delhi, Feb 16: With an aim of making it to the Indian squad for the Champions Trophy in England, Ashish Nehra is all set to play three matches for the Rishabh Pant-led Delhi in the Vijay Hazare National One Day tournament in Cuttack.

The notable omission has been former India U-19 World Cup winning captain Unmukt Chand, who incidentally had led Delhi in a few Ranji Trophy matches this season.

Unmukt's inconsistency has been a talking point for past three seasons now and exclusion from Hazare Trophy can impact his IPL bid.

As announced earlier, young wicketkeeper-batsman Pant will be leading the squad that also has former captains like Shikhar Dhawan and Gautam Gambhir.

It will be after a couple of years that Nehra will be playing in the National One Day tournament having made an impressive comeback in the T20 version.

But the 38-year-old will only play 3 out of the 6 matches because the recovery time needed will be more for the veteran speedster.

The additional member of the squad is a rookie left-arm speedster Kulwant Khejroliya, who recently was seen bowling at a brisk pace at the Delhi Daredevils nets.

Kulwant will travel with the team and if need be played a List A match. Mohit Ahlawat, who recently scored a 300 in a 30-yard-park, has been rewarded for the hype that has surrounded his performance in an unsanctioned local T20 tournament.

Ahlawat, who had scored 5 runs in 3 Ranji Trophy matches including a hat-trick of ducks, is among the four stand-byes.

Squad: Rishabh Pant (captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Gautam Gambhir, Ashish Nehra, Milind Kumar, Dhruv Shorey, Sarthak Ranjan, Himmat Singh, Nitish Rana, Manan Sharma, Pawan Negi, Pulkit Narang, Pradeep Sangwan, Navdeep Saini, Vikas Tokas. 16th Member: Kulwant Khejroliya (3 matches). Standby: Aditya Kaushik, Tejas Baroka, Mohit Ahlawat, Subodh Bhati.

PTI