Deodhar Trophy: Rana to lead North Zone; Abhishek, Prabhsimran in squad

Left-handed batter Nitish Rana from Delhi will lead North Zone in the Deodhar Trophy to be held in Puducherry from July 24.

Rana, who had led Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL 2023, will be eager to make an impression here and return to the national reckoning.

The 29-year-old Rana has played one ODI and two T20Is for India in 2021 during the tour to Sri Lanka.

Rana had a good outing in the IPL for KKR as well, amassing 413 runs from 14 matches at a strike rate of 140.95 with 3 fifties.

In fact, he was the second highest run-getter for the Knight Riders behind Rinku Singh (474 runs) in this IPL.

Promising batter Abhishek Sharma, wicketkeeper batter Prabhsimran Singh and Harshit Rana too have been added to the 15-member squad.

However, the trio is also part of the India squad for the Emerging Teams Asia Cup, scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka between July 13 and 23.

In the event of India reaching the final in that tournament, they will join the North Zone squad at a later date.

"If India reaches the finals, there may be a delay in them joining the team and the stand-bye players will play the the first game in that case," said North Zone selection committee convenor Anirudh Chaudhary.

North Zone squad: Nitish Rana (Captain), Abhishek Sharma, Prabhsimran Singh, SG Rohilla, S Khajuria, Mandeep Singh, Himanshu Rana, Vivrant Sharma, Nishant Sindhu, Rishi Dhawan, Yudhvir Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Mayank Markande.

Stand-bye players: Mayank Dagar, Mayank Yadav, Arslan Khan, Shubham Arora, Yuvraj Singh, Manan Vohra, Aqib Nabi, Shivank Vashisht.