Sai Sudharsan is back from a toe fracture, and the Border-Gavaskar auditions start in Puducherry
India A and Australia A begin a four-day match in Puducherry on Tuesday, the first of five fixtures on a tour that doubles as a selection exercise for the five Tests in January.
Sep 22, 2026
India A and Australia A start a four-day match at the Cricket Association Puducherry Siechem Stadium on Tuesday, first ball at 9.30am IST. It is the opening fixture of a tour that runs to 11 October and never leaves Puducherry, and for a good number of the 22 players involved it is the first of several auditions for a Test series in January.
What is actually being picked here
Australia play five Tests in India between 21 January and 3 March, at Nagpur, Chennai, Guwahati, Ranchi and Ahmedabad. India’s selectors go into that series short of two specific things: a third opener and a reserve spinner they trust in home conditions. Both gaps are on display in Puducherry.
Tanush Kotian is the off-spinner being looked at. The Mumbai bowler has been around the fringes long enough to know what these games decide, and with two four-day matches back to back there is time for a bowler to build a case rather than have one good session and hope.
Sudharsan opens again, Padikkal leads
Sai Sudharsan is back from a stress fracture in his toe and will open, which is the clearest signal of what India A want from him. The injury cost him the Sri Lanka Test series and six weeks of rehabilitation in Bengaluru. His last red-ball outing for this side produced 132 and 168 against Sri Lanka A, and the immediate prize is the reserve opener’s job on India A’s tour of New Zealand, three four-day games starting on 24 October.
Devdutt Padikkal captains the side, with Sudharsan as his deputy. The 26-year-old was player of the series in Sri Lanka on the back of 167 in Galle and 117 in Colombo, and he is now the batter India would call on at number three rather than a name on a standby list. Tushar Deshpande and Anshul Kamboj carry the international caps in the bowling group.
Australia have not sent a development side
Peter Handscomb captains an Australia A team in which he, Sam Konstas, Nathan McSweeney, Todd Murphy and Brendan Doggett have all played Test cricket. Konstas and Campbell Kellaway open, McSweeney comes in at three, Handscomb bats four and Jason Sangha five, with Josh Philippe keeping wicket. Liam Scott, Fergus O’Neill and Doggett share the new ball, and Murphy has Corey Rocchiccioli alongside him as a second spinner, which tells you what Australia expect the surface to do.
Handscomb is 35, has 20 Tests behind him and has not played one since March 2023, and he is still in the conversation for a tour of India. Doggett is at the other end of that curve, an Ashes debutant in November 2025. Tim Paine, coaching this side, called Handscomb one of the best players of spin in Australia.
Three weeks of it
The second four-day match starts on 29 September at the same ground, and three one-day games follow on 6, 9 and 11 October. Puducherry does not often get an assignment of this length, and by the end of it both sets of selectors should have a much shorter list of names to argue about.