There were no surprises as India announced the Test squad to face New Zealand this month, with selectors reducing the party from 17 to 15 from the one that comfortably beat West Indies.

Stuart Binny and Shardul Thakur were the two to miss out, neither having played on that tour of the Caribbean and both currently playing in the Duleep Trophy and Australia A vs India A unofficial Tests respectively.

It remains to be seen if captain Virat Kohli prefers to go into the game with five bowlers or not. If he does, then Rohit Sharma might be relegated to the bench again with Ravichandran Ashwin batting at number six.

The only area of debate was whether Gautam Gambhir would make a return to the squad after his fine form in the Duleep Trophy where he has registered scores of 77, 90, 59, 94 in the four innings he has batted in. The selectors decided to stick with KL Rahul, Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan as the opening options instead.

The first Test in the series is scheduled for September 22 at Kanpur, which will be followed by Tests in Kolkata and Indore.

SQUAD

Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rohit Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Amit Mishra, Mohammed Shami,  Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav.