India squad for South Africa Tests announced, Rohit Sharma named ODI captain

The India squad for the upcoming Test series against South Africa has been revealed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). In addition to the squad, BCCI also confirmed that Rohit Sharma will be the India ODI captain going forward. The reports of Rohit succeeding Virat Kohli in ODIs were doing rounds for a while. Rohit was earlier named the captain of the T20I team as well after Virat Kohli stepped down from the post. 

Speaking about the squad, the underfire duo of Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have managed to hold on to their spot. However, Rahane has been dropped as the vice-captain of the side. The duties will now be performed by Rohit Sharma. Hanuma Vihari, who was shockingly dropped from the India squad for the New Zealand series, is back along with all senior players who were rested from the New Zealand series.

Meanwhile, Navdeep Saini, Saurabh Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Arzan Nagwaswalla have been named as standby players. Some of the prominent names to miss out on the tour owing to injuries are Ravindra Jadeja, Shubman Gill, Axar Patel, Rahul Chahar.

The series gets underway on December 26 in Centurion. It was initially scheduled to start from December 17. However, the series was pushed back owing to the Omicron threat.

India's Test squad: Virat Kohli (Captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Jayant Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Mohd. Shami, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Md. Siraj.

Standby Players: Navdeep Saini, Saurabh Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Arzan Nagwaswalla.