Dhawan, Ishant named in Delhi's Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy squad

Shikhar Dhawan and Ishant Sharma have been included in Delhi's squad for the upcoming Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, India's domestic T20 tournament. Gautam Gambhir will lead Delhi in the competition, which begins on January 29.

Dhawan, currently in India's ODI squad, scored 1 and 11 in two games against England before being left out of the third. He is not part of India's T20 squad for the three T20s against England, which start from next week. Since the beginning of 2016, Dhawan has scored 756 runs in 25 matches across formats at an average of 30.24 with just one century.

Ishant, who was left out of India's ODI squad after the series against Australia in January 2016, was also released by his IPL franchise, Rising Pune Supergiants, and will look at this competition as a platform to impress ahead of the upcoming IPL auction in February.

Wicketkeeper Arjun Gupta was named as a replacement for Rishabh Pant, who was selected in India's T20 squad for the England series.

In June last year, the BCCI had decided to revamp the structure of the tournament in favour of an inter-zonal league. The new tournament will be divided into two stages - an inter-state one, followed by the main inter-zonal one featuring the top-performing players from the states. Earlier, the tournament comprised teams spread across four groups with the top two from each qualifying for the knockouts.

Delhi squad: Gautam Gambhir (captain), Unmukt Chand, Shikhar Dhawan, Nitish Rana, Milind Kumar, Kshitij Sharma, Sarthak Ranjan, Arjun Gupta, Pawan Negi, Manan Sharma, Ishant Sharma, Navdeep Saini, Vikas Tokas, Pradeep Sangwan, Subodh Bhati