5 players who missed out on India's A squad for South Africa tour

#3 Nitish Rana

Nitish Rana starred for the Mumbai Indians in IPL 2017

At one stage in IPL 2017, Nitish Rana was single-handedly winning games for Mumbai Indians and in a batting line-up that consisted of Rohit Sharma, Kieron Pollard, Parthiv Patel and Jos Buttler, the 23-year-old batsman was the leading run-scorer.

Although his runs dried up at the latter stages of the tournament, Rana finished the 2017 IPL season as Mumbai’s third highest run-getter with 333 runs at an average of 30.27.

The left-hand batsman has also been a prolific run-scorer in the Ranji circuit in the last few years. He made his Ranji Trophy debut in 2015-16 and ended the season as Delhi’s highest run scorer with 557 runs. In the same year, he slammed 21 sixes, the most by any batsman in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, India’s interstate T-20 tournament.

After watching Rana's spectacular performance in the IPL, even Ricky Ponting felt that he would soon play at a higher level. As quoted by cricket.com.au, the former Australian captain said, “He’s got a very good domestic record in one-day and four-day cricket. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in an Indian T20 squad.”

However, it seems Rana is yet to grab the attention of the selectors. The emergence of Karun Nair, Ankit Bawne and Krunal Pandya probably resulted in his omission from the A team.