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All-rounder Jayant Yadav will lead the North Zone at the 2023 Duleep trophy with Mandeep Singh pulling out of the tournament with an injury. Mumbai Indians left-hander Nehal Wadhera will replace injured Mandeep Singh after he was initially kept as a standby for the North Zone.
Wadhera has played for the state in the Cooch Behar and the Vijay Merchant Trophy at the U-16 Level before progressing to the U19 stage. The MI lad made his debut for Punjab in the Ranji Trophy 2022-23 season, scoring a hundred on his debut and amassing 376 runs in five matches.
“We received intimation this morning from the Punjab Cricket Association that Mandeep Singh had gotten injured and would be unavailable for the Duleep Trophy. Pursuant thereto a video conference was organized this evening with all the selectors of the North Zone Selection Committee and the same was chaired by Chetan Sharma,” Anirudh Chaudhry, Convenor of the Zonal Committee, was quoted as saying in a press release.
“Selectors discussed the issue and unanimously decided that Nehal Wadhera would be the replacement for Mandeep Singh. Since Mandeep Singh was the captain of the side, the Committee also picked Jayant Yadav to lead the North Zone team in the Duleep trophy,” Chaudhry continued.
The first domestic competition of the season will kick off on Wednesday, June 28 with North Zone taking on Northeast Zone at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.
North Zone updated squad: Jayant Yadav (c), Prashant Chopra, Dhruv Shorey, Manan Vohra, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Ankit Kumar, AS Kalsi, Harshit Rana, Abid Mushtaq, Pulkit Narang, Nishant Sandhu, Sidharth Kaul, Vaibhav Arora, Baltej Singh, Nehal Wadhera.
