Venugopal Rao to lead India A

Venugopal Rao has been named captain of the India A side for the six-nation EurAsia Cricket Series at Abu Dhabi from April 22 to May 5.

Robin Singh has been named coach of the squad, which, apart from Rao, also includes three players who were part of the mix in the national side during the home series against England: Piyush Chawla, the 16-year-old legspinner, played in the first Test, while RP Singh and VRV Singh were in the one-day squad and played the fifth match at Jamshedpur. The squad also includes Dinesh Karthik, the wicketkeeper from Tamil Nadu who played for India before being upstaged by Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

India have been bunched along with Pakistan and Holland, while Sri Lanka, Ireland and UAE comprise Group B. India open their campaign with a match against Holland against April 23.

Squad
Robin Uthappa, Shikhar Dhawan, Sivaramakrishnan Vidyut, Venugopal Rao (capt), S Badrinath, Abhisek Jhunjhunwala, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Shib Sankar Paul, RP Singh, VRV Singh, Piyush Chawla.