Who is Mukesh Kumar, the surprise standby player in India's WTC final squad?
Hailing from Bengal, Mukesh Kumar has been part of India's squads before, but is yet to make his national team debut.
The medium pacer, who earned a maiden national call-up in October last year for the home ODIs against South Africa, has been Bengal's attack leader for a while now.
Mukesh, who made his first-class debut in 2015, has 149 wickets in the red-ball format at an average of 21.55 with six five-wicket hauls. On his first-class debut, Mukesh dismissed the likes of Virender Sehwag and took a four-wicket haul.
He shot to fame in the 2019/20 Ranji Trophy season, taking 32 wickets in 10 matches, including a six-wicket haul in the semi-final clash against Karnataka that helped Bengal to the final.
Mukesh dismissed KL Rahul in the first innings and other India players like Manish Pandey (both innings) and Devdutt Padikkal, finishing with eight wickets in the match.
He earned a call-up in September 2022 to the India A team for the unofficial Tests against New Zealand A and finished the series as the joint-highest wicket-taker with nine scalps, taking a five-wicket haul in the first unofficial Test.
In December the same year, he impressed with a six-wicket haul for India A against Bangladesh in Sylhet. Later in the month, the pacer walked off with a hefty INR 5.5 crore deal from the IPL 2023 auctions, with Delhi Capitals securing his services.
The seamer has played eight matches in the ongoing IPL season and taken six wickets.
He is on the standby list for the World Test Championship final squad alongside Ruturaj Gaikwad and Suryakumar Yadav. But with growing concerns over the injuries to quicks Jaydev Unadkat and Umesh Yadav, who are being monitored by the BCCI medical team, Mukesh could still feature in the main squad for the marquee clash next month.