India add Shardul Thakur to T20 World Cup squad

Patel, the left-arm spinner, was initially included in the 15-man squad but will now join the standby list instead ahead of the October 15 deadline

India have added Shardul Thakur to their T20 World Cup squad at the expense of Axar Patel.

The left-arm spinner was initially included in the 15-man squad but will now join the standby list instead ahead of the October 15 deadline.

Thakur has played 22 T20Is for India and has taken 31 wickets. In the recent Test series against England, he hit fifties in both innings against England at the Kia Oval. He has a strike rate of 197.14 in five T20I innings.

The BCCI also confirmed that Avesh Khan, Umran Malik, Harshal Patel, Lukman Meriwala, Venkatesh Iyer, Karn Sharma, Shahbaz Ahmed and K. Gowtham will be part of the bio-bubble to assist the squad in the preparations for the tournament.

India squad: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Rahul Chahar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Varun Chakravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammad Shami

Stand-by players: Shreyas Iyer, Deepak Chahar, Axar Patel

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