World Cup 2019: BCCI to send four pacers as reserve bowlers

As per the tournament guidelines, the teams are free to change their squads without permission from the ICC till May 22. After that, changes have to be cleared by the ICC.

Khaleel Ahmed has been shortlisted as one of the reserve bowlers and will be travelling with the Indian team to England.

Four medium-pacers - Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar, Avesh Khan and Navdeep Saini - will travel to England with the Indian team as reserve bowlers for the World Cup.

As reported earlier by Sportstar , the national selection committee chairman, M.S.K. Prasad, confirmed the development. “There will be four medium pacers who will travel along with the team,” Prasad said on Monday.

Prasad also insisted that Khaleel and Saini’s name were discussed in the selection committee meeting.

“Khaleel’s name was discussed and so was Saini’s. They will be in and around and if the need arises, one of them will be picked,” Prasad said.

READ: Team India for World Cup 2019: Karthik, Jadeja, Shankar in squad, Pant misses out

One of the BCCI officials indicated that such a decision has been taken to cover up for any injuries and to provide quality bowling in the nets.

“This has been decided considering it is a one and half-month long tournament.

The selectors had earlier sent fringe bowlers Avesh Khan, Mohammed Siraj, Basil Thampi and Ankit Rajpoot as net bowlers to South Africa.

During the Asia Cup in Dubai, the Board had sent five India A bowlers - Avesh, Prasidh Krishna, Siddharth Kaul, Shahbaz Nadeem and Mayank Markande - to help out the batsmen.

As per the tournament guidelines, the teams are free to change their squads without permission from the ICC till May 22. After that, changes have to be cleared by the ICC.