East Zone include Shami in the squad for the Duleep Trophy with Ishan Kishan named captain of the 15-man squad.
Mohammed Shami in East Zone squad for Duleep Trophy.
The East Zone team for the 2025–2026 Duleep Trophy includes Mohammed Shami.
Ishan Kishan was selected captain of the 15-man team, which also included Akash Deep, Mukesh Kumar, and Riyan Parag. Kishan made two half-centuries in two innings for Nottinghamshire in the current County Championship Division One. A member of India’s Test team in England, Abhimanyu Easwaran, was named vice-captain.
Among the six standbys was Vaibhav Suryavanshi, 14, who during India Under-19’s tour of England last month scored the fastest century in youth ODIs.
The 34-year-old Shami last played in the IPL 2025, taking six wickets in nine games for Sunrisers Hyderabad, his current squad. In November 2024, he played his final first-class match for Bengal in the Ranji Trophy. Since his final World Test Championship match for India in June 2023, that was his only red-ball appearance.
Bengal’s top run scorer from the previous season’s Ranji Trophy, Sudip Chatterjee, was left out of the East Zone team, but their second-highest scorer, Sudip Kumar Gharami, was included in the standbys.
The team included left-arm spinner Manishi, who claimed 22 wickets in seven games, and Jharkhand’s top two run scorers from the previous Ranji Trophy, Virat Singh and Sharandeep Singh.
Initiating the 2025–26 domestic season, the six-team Duleep Trophy is returning to the zonal format, with squads chosen by the zonal selectors. India A, B, C, and D were the four teams chosen by the national selectors for the event last season. At the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, East Zone will meet North Zone in the first match of the domestic season starting on August 28.