Senior off-spinner Parvez Rasool and uncapped young Tamil Nadu all-rounder Washington Sundar are likely to replace injured Ravichandran Ashwin in the Rising Pune Supergiant squad for the upcoming IPL 2017.
As per a Times of India report, Rasool and 17-year-old Sundar would undergo a trial session on Monday (April 3) in Pune for their selection.
28-year-old Rasool, who played for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the previous season, couldn’t find any takers in this year’s IPL auction after RCB released him.
The Kashmir off-spinner has fair amount of experience playing in the IPL as well as in the domestic season. Rasool has also played for India in the T20I tournament against England. While Sundar made some consistent performances for Tamil Nadu in the recently conculded Vijay Hazare and Deodhar Trophy tournaments. Both the players are expected to attend a trial with Pune on Monday. “Rasool has experience, while Washington is young and impressive. Both have been amongst the wickets in the recently concluded List A tournaments and that has probably earned them this opportunity,” a source in RPS was quoted as saying. Earlier, reports were doing the rounds that the new RPS skipper Steve Smith tried to convince the franchise owners to get his Australian team mate Nathan Lyon as a replacement for Ashwin. Ashwin is suffering from sports hernia and he underwent scans in Mumbai after the final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy concluded in Dharamsala. Ashwin’s absence will be badly missed by his franchise, which will be playing it’s second IPL season. South Africa spinner Imran Tahir, who was bought after Mitchell Marsh was ruled out, will now be heading spin department along with Australian Adam Zampa.