Dravid to coach India ODI and T20 team on their tour of Sri Lanka

Rahul Dravid will coach the Indian one-day and T20 team on their tour of Sri Lanka in July, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said on Tuesday.

Current head coach Ravi Shastri is with Virat Kohli’s Test side in England.

Only the second Indian after Sachin Tendulkar to score more than 10,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs, Dravid has been at the helm of India’s Under-19 and A teams for the past few years. His name as the possible head coach for Sri Lanka was doing the rounds, but the board did not make any official announcement while naming the squad last week.

“Rahul Dravid will be the coach for the India tour to Sri Lanka,” Ganguly told The Indian Express.

Also read: Dhawan as captain, Dravid as coach? New-look India team to tour Lanka

This is the first time that two different Indian teams will play in two different parts of the world. Regular captain Kohli will be leading the Test side in a five-match series against England while Shikhar Dhawan will lead the Indian limited-overs side around the same time in Sri Lanka.

The squad for Sri Lanka was announced by the All-India Senior Selection Committee of the BCCI. They picked 20 players with five net bowlers. All matches will be played at the R Premadasa International Cricket Stadium in Colombo.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar will be the vice-captain. Prithvi Shaw earned a call-up into the white-ball squad while openers Devdutt Padikkal and Ruturaj Gaikwad were also named.

The BCCI chose Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, K Gowtham as spinners while the young speedster Chetan Sakariya, who impressed everyone in the Indian Premier League, also earned a place in the squad.

The three ODIs will be played on July 13, 16 and 18. The T20I series will start on July 21. The next two matches will be played on July 23 and 25.

India’s squad: Shikhar Dhawan (captain), Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suryakumar Yadav, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Nitish Rana, Ishan Kishan (Wicket-keeper), Sanju Samson (wicket-keeper), Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Bhuvneshwar Kumar (vice-captain), Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Chetan Sakariya

Net bowlers: Ishan Pore, Sandeep Warrier, Arshdeep Singh, Sai Kishore, Simarjeet Singh