India announces squad for Test series against Bangladesh, Rishabh Pant makes comeback

India has announced their 16-man squad for the opening match of the two-Test series against Bangladesh which is starting on September 19. 

Interestingly, wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant is all set to make a return after around 20 months. 

Pant last played a Test match in December 2022 and he recently made his return to red-ball cricket during the Duleep Trophy 2024. The wicketkeeper-batter was part of the India B team that defeated India A in Bengaluru.

Incidentally, Pant's last Test match was also against Bangladesh, as he was part of the team that won the game in Mirpur before he met with the car accident late in 2022. 

KL Rahul is also back in the squad as a pure batter for the first Test.

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja are all part of the squad having missed the Duleep trophy first match. There is also a first call-up for Yash Dayal in the team, which doesn't have Shreyas Iyer in the mix.

Kohli also made a comeback having missed the five-Test series against England at home earlier this year.

The first Test between India and Bangladesh will start from September 19 at the Chepauk in Chennai.

SQUAD: Rohit Sharma (C), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant (WK), Dhruv Jurel (WK), R Ashwin, R Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohd. Siraj, Akash Deep, Jasprit Bumrah, Yash Dayal.