India skipper Rohit Sharma 'thinking about taking Mayank Yadav, Nitish Reddy and Harshit Rana' to Australia

India skipper Rohit Sharma says that the team is taking Harshit Rana, Nitish Reddy and Mayank Yadav as travelling reserve in upcoming New Zealand Tests to build up the bench strength. India play three Tests against New Zealand starting Wednesday (Oct 16) in Bengaluru.

"We want to create a bench strength where tomorrow if anything happens to anyone, we are not worried, and we don't want to be worried or too heavily reliant on a few individuals. That's not the right thing to do," Rohit said at the pre-match press conference on Tuesday (Oct 15).

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"We want to look at the future at the same time, try and make sure that we get the right guys in as well. We want to create guys where even if there are injuries, we have got someone to quickly step in and take that role," he added.

The skipper also revealed that the team is thinking to take Mayank, Nitish and Rana to upcoming tour of Australia as well.

"You know, the reason we wanted to keep them close to us was because we are thinking of them to take them to Australia," Rohit said.

"We just want to monitor them and see their workload. We have seen some talent in them. I understand that they have not played a lot of red-ball cricket, but when you see a talent, you want to try and groom them," he added.

The five-Test Border-Gavaskar series starts November 22 next month in Australia and India are most likely to be without premier pacer Mohammed Shami.

Shami is still nursing the injury he suffered during the ODI World Cup 2023 where he emerged as the highest wicket-taker.

Rohit revealed that Shami suffered from knee soreness while in recovery and might not make it to the tour Down Under.