Former Team India opener Wasim Jaffer has predicted Team India’s playing XI for the first Test match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia to be played in Nagpur from February 9. He has also told why he will not keep Akshar Patel in his playing eleven? While his performance has been good with ball and bat in the last few Test matches. He has not chosen Ishaan Kishan as the wicketkeeper.

Wasim Jaffer has selected his playing XI on his Twitter handle. He has kept KL Rahul with Rohit Sharma as the opener, while Cheteshwar Pujara has been chosen as usual at number three. At the same time, Virat Kohli will play the responsibility at number 4 and Wasim Jaffer has chosen Shubman Gill at number 5, whose recent form has been good in every format of cricket. Perhaps this is the reason why they are not seeing Suryakumar Yadav making his debut.

The former veteran cricketer has roped in KS Bharat as the wicket-keeper batsman, who has been traveling with the team for the last one and a half years and has had to do a bit of wicketkeeping on a few occasions. However, he is now being seen as the frontrunner to take over the gloves in the absence of Rishabh Pant. At the same time, Ravindra Jadeja at number 7, R Ashwin at 8, Kuldeep Yadav at 9, Mohammed Shami at 10 and Mohammed Siraj at 11 have been kept.

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He has also told in his tweet that he does not want Akshar Patel in the playing XI because Kuldeep Yadav can bowl with more variations as a wrist spinner. Kuldeep Yadav has done well in Test cricket in the last few matches and if he gets even a little help from the pitch, he will certainly be enough to cause trouble for the Australian batsmen.

Wasim Jaffer’s playing XI

Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill, KS Bharat (wicketkeeper), Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj.