England-Bound Tushar Deshpande Ruled Out of T20 Mumbai League 2025
With the Indian pace bowler Tushar Deshpande set to travel to England with the India A side, the Mumbai South Central Maratha Royals icon player has been ruled out of the T20 Mumbai League 2025 edition.
Tushar Deshpande was picked as an icon player by the Mumbai South Central Maratha Royals in the draft that took few weeks back.
However, Deshpande’s selection in the India A team for the upcoming 2 multi-day matches against England Lions commencing from May 29, has ruled out the player for the Mumbai League, which is to be played from June 6.
Tushar Deshpande, who moved to the Rajasthan Royals from the Chennai Super Kings, didn’t have a great IPL 2025 campaign. The pacer picked only 9 wickets in 10 games with economy rate close of 11. This is quite an underwhelming performance from the pacer given he picked 21 and 17 wickets for CSK in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
Rohan Raje replaces Tushar Deshpande
The former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) pacer has been replaced by a former Mumbai Indians medium pacer, 38-year-old Rohan Raje.
Rohan made his debut in 2007 for the Mumbai state team in T20 cricket. He followed that with List-A debut in 2008 and first-class debut in 2010.
He was also part of the Mumbai Indians (MI) franchise for two seasons in the IPL, 2008 and 2009. He has played total 10 IPL matches and taken 6 wickets.
The Maratha Royals will also lose the services of batter Armaan Jaffer, who according to a Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) official, has pulled out of the league as he wants to play for Pondicherry in upcoming season. He has been replaced by Saksham Parashar.
Former Mumbai Indians batter Siddhesh Lad named captain
Meanwhile, the Mumbai South Central Maratha Royals have named former Mumbai Indians batter Siddhesh Lad as the captain for the third edition of the T20 Mumbai League.
Lad was part of the Mumbai Indians team in two different stints. First in 2015 but didn’t play any match. He was bought once again in 2018 and after a year’s wait, he played first and only match in 2019 where he scored 15 runs vs Punjab Kings.
Meanwhile, he had an wonderful campaign in the Ranji Trophy, scoring 602 runs in 12 innings, including 2 magnificent centuries vs Meghalaya and Odisha, 145 and 169 runs in an inning respectively.
Squad: Siddhesh Lad (c), Sachin Yadav, Aditya Dhumal, Khan Awais Naushad, Sahil Jadhav, Naman Jhawar, Maxwell Swaminathan, Varun Rao, Rohan Ghag, Ajay Singh Janu, Chinmay Sutar, Irfan Umair, Parag Khanapurkar, Vaibhav Mali, Yash Gadia, Shashwat Jagtap, Rohan Raje and Saksham Parashar.
