Ishan Kishan has replaced Sanju Samson in the India A squad for the 50-overs tri-series in England, which also features England Lions and West Indies A. A BCCI release stated that Samson failed a fitness test prior to the squad's departure, but did not mention any further details.
A Mumbai Mirror report said Samson had failed the yo-yo test. In recent months, India's team management has used the yo-yo test as a benchmark, setting a minimum score of 16:1 as a prerequisite for players to be eligible for selection.
A BCCI official has confirmed to ESPNcricinfo that Samson failed the test. It is understood that his yo-yo reading was well short of the benchmark of 16:1.
Samson isn't the first Indian player to fall short of the yo-yo standard in the last year; Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh were the first high-profile players who failed to meet it, after it was introduced. In October 2017, the teenaged allrounder Washington Sundar failed it and missed out on selection for a T20I series against New Zealand.
The folks at ESPNcricinfo put themselves through a modified version of the YO-YO test. Let's see how they fare.
Samson, 23, had been chosen as a specialist batsman for the England tour, with Rishabh Pant taking the wicketkeeping gloves. His selection came on the back of a strong IPL season for Rajasthan Royals, in which he made 441 runs at an average of 31.50 and a strike rate of 137.81. He has been capped once for India, in a T20I against Zimbabwe in July 2015.
Kishan, 19, was India's captain at the Under-19 World Cup in 2016. He had a productive IPL season too, finding a settled place in the Mumbai Indians top order and scoring 286 runs at an average of 22.91 and a strike rate of 149.45. He is also a regular wicketkeeper; at the 2016 Under-19 World Cup, however, it was Pant who took the big gloves ahead of Kishan.
India A squad for tri-series: Shreyas Iyer (capt), Prithvi Shaw, Mayank Agarwal, Shubhman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wk), Vijay Shankar, K. Gowtham, Axar Patel, Krunal Pandya, Prasidh Krishna, Deepak Chahar, Khaleel Ahmed, Shardul Thakur