Suresh Raina named UP captain for Ranji Trophy

Captain Suresh Raina has been named Uttar Pradesh for their Ranji Trophy opener against Railways beginning on Friday.
Suresh Raina was named as the captain of India Blue in the Duleep Trophy. this season he has been away from the National squad since 2015 and was also opted out from the T20 squad which will face Australia.

Both Raina and Mishra  failed the fitness tests at National Cricket Academy.

They have been out of favour for Team India because of their lacklustre form and fitness.

The Indian team in the past couple of years have raised the bar in terms of fitness, increasing even the criteria to make it to the team bench.

While Suresh Raina’s place in Tests side. Raina will be looking to regain place in the ODI side for the upcoming series against New Zealand with a strong performance in the opening round of Ranji Trophy 2017.

The 28 teams have been split into four groups. Uttar Pradesh were in Group A. Delhi, Assam, Hyderabad, Maharashtra, Karnataka and their opponents in the opening round of matches, Railways.
Uttar Pradesh squad:
Suresh Raina (captain)

Shivam Chaudhary

Himanshu Asnora

Rinku Singh

Akshdeep Nath

Eklavya Dwivedi

Umang Sharma

Almas Shaukat

Saurabh Kumar

Zeeshan Ansari

Deependra Pandey

Ankit Rajput

Praveen Kumar

Kartik Tyagi

Imtiyaz Ahmad

Israr Azim

Dhruv Pratap Singh.