THE newly-formed national selection committee will meet on Tuesday (January 19) to pick the squad for the first two home Tests against England. The meeting, the first for the Chetan Sharma-headed panel, has been scheduled for 5 PM IST and will take place over a Zoom call and feature captain Virat Kohli, who is currently on paternity leave.

With the Indian team doing extremely well in Australia, it is a no-brainer that there will not be too many changes to the squad on a performance metric. All that the selectors – Sunil Joshi, Debasis Mohanty, Harvinder Singh and Abey Kuruvilla besides Sharma – will have to see is who is fit and who is not.

The focus, of course, will be on Jasprit Bumrah and R Ashwin – the two regulars whose availability will be discussed threadbare. The two are not playing the Gabba Test. Ravindra Jadeja and Hanuma Vihari, the other two presumed regulars in Tests, are out of contention because of injuries. Also unavailable apparently are Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav, the two pacers who would have found their way into the squad automatically.

But the selectors are on an easy wicket as the Australia series has proved that there is enough bench strength to deal with. Shardul Thakur, T Natarajan and Washington Sundar have provided the team management with a happy headache. All three are likely to be retained.

All the selectors, barring Harvinder who is in Australia, are watching the Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament at different centres. During an informal meeting 10 days back, the selectors were told to keep an eye on the first-class players in the Mushtaq Ali tournament.

The selection panel has already taken two important decisions. The first was to include Sundar, Natarajan and Thakur in the Test squad in Australia as the injury crisis deepened. The second decision was to appoint Rohit Sharma as vice-captain in place of Cheteshwar Pujara.

 The thinking was that Rohit is too senior a player to be not named vice-captain. However, with Kohli back in the squad, things will be back to normal — Ajinkya Rahane will be the vice-captain again..

The first two Tests of the series will be played in Chennai — from February 5-9 and 13-17 respectively. The England team will arrive in India in two batches.

 The team playing in Sri Lanka currently will fly to Chennai on January 27 by a chartered flight. Those who are not in Sri Lanka but will be selected for the India tour will fly to India on January 23. (Cricbuzz)