(Cricket news) The star Indian batter KL Rahul has been ruled out of the third India vs England test match to be played at Rajkot from the 15th of Feb. Rahul missed the second test due to a right quadriceps injury and has still not fully recovered.

Kl Rahul was named in the India’s squad for the final three tests, but his availability was subject to fitness. He was about to join the Indian team in Rajkot on Monday, but reportedly is still at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru.

Devdutt Padikkal , the Karnataka batsman has been named as the replacement for Rahul and will join the team ahead of the third test. He receives a maiden call-up to Test squad. Padikkal is having a wonderful domestic season and is fresh from a wonderful century (151 runs) against Tami Nadu just few days back. He has also had a good run for the India A side and also scored a ton against England Lions in the second unofficial test.

The absence of Kl Rahul, however is not a very good news for the Indian side that is lacking experience in its batting line-up. Virat Kohli has already been ruled out of the series and Shreyas Iyer is also not a part of the squad. Sarfaraz Khan is now the front runner to replace Rahul in the 11 and is well in course to make a well deserved India debut.

Rahul and Virat’s absence will now force India to field a rather inexperienced batting line-up with the likes of Jaiswal, Gill, Patidar, Sarfaraz and Bharat filling in the spots, who subsequently have less test runs combined when compared to Joe Root.

Squad for 3rd Test: Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Sarfaraz Khan, Rajat Patidar, Ravindra Jadeja, KS Bharat (wk), Dhruv Jurel (wk), Axar Patel, R Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Devdutt Padikkal

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