3 Reasons Why Rajat Patidar Missed Out on the India A Tour to England?

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has named the India A squad for the England tour. Two first-class matches will be played against the England Lions at Canterbury and Northampton. A squad featuring 18 players has been announced, and Shubman Gill and Sai Sudarshan will join the squad from the second match. The tour will conclude with a match against Team India (Senior Men). The India A squad missed out on a few key players, and Rajat Patidar was one of them.

3 Reasons Why Rajat Patidar Was Not Picked in the India A Squad?

1. Rajat Patidar incurred a finger injury on his right hand while playing for the Royal Challengers Bangalore on 3 May 2025, against the Chennai Super Kings. This injury turned out to be serious, and it was assumed that Rajat might miss out on the remainder of the IPL as well. But the postponement of the league due to security reasons provided some recovery time to Rajat. The second phase of the IPL is going to commence from 17 May 2025, and Royal Challengers Bangalore is up against Kolkata Knight Riders. According to the RCB team director, Patidar batted in the nets for around 30 minutes without any visible discomfort and is going well. But as he encountered a finger injury to his right hand, the members of the selection committee would have kept this in mind, and that might be one of the potential reasons for him to miss out on the squad.
2. Another reason for his absence from the squad could be his last few innings in the IPL, where he has not crossed the 25-run mark, although he started the season pretty well, and his domestic season was also impressive for Madhya Pradesh, scoring more than 500 runs in 11 innings but the 31-year-old was found struggling when he made his international test debut for India last year when England was on the tour of India. He scored just 63 runs in the 6 test innings with an average of 10.5.
3. Players like Sai Sudarshan and Karun Nair have been performing quite consistently at the domestic level, and that might be the reason why selectors have decided to go ahead with them over Rajat Patidar.

All You Need to Know About Rajat Patidar Statistics

Rajat Patidar has been quite decent with his performances in the last few years in every format of the game. He made his first-class debut in 2015 for Madhya Pradesh and went on to have an impeccable Ranji season in 2018, where he scored 713 runs in eight matches. As far as his IPL statistics are concerned, Rajat has played 38 matches in the IPL and scored 1038 runs at an average of 31.4 at a very healthy strike rate of 154.2.

Year 2022 was the breakthrough season for him in his IPL career, as he was signed as a mid-season replacement and went on to score 333 runs in just 8 innings at an average of 55.5. When Rajat Patidar was retained by the RCB ahead of the IPL 2025, he was being considered as a potential captaincy candidate, and he did complete justice with his on-ground decisions.

India A Squad for England Tour

Abhimanyu Easwaran (c), Karun Nair, Dhruv Jurel (vc) (wk), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Shardul Thakur, Ishan Kishan (wk), Manav Suthar, Tanush Kotian, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Harshit Rana, Anshul Kamboj, Khaleel Ahmed, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Sarfaraz Khan, Tushar Deshpande, Harsh Dubey, Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal

Note: Shubman Gill and Sai Sudarshan will join the rest of the squad from the second match onwards, as IPL playoffs will clash with the first match against England.