Rohit Sharma leads the squad with Jasprit Bumrah as his vice-captain. But with Rohit set to miss one of the first two Tests for personal reasons, it's likely that Abhimanyu, 29, will make his Test debut on the tour. He has been part of India's Test squad previously - in Bangladesh in 2022 - and has been in superb form this domestic season, scoring two hundreds in the Duleep Trophy, another century in the Irani Trophy, and beginning the Ranji Trophy season with a ton for Bengal.

Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh and Rana are the other fast bowlers in squad apart from Bumrah. Prasidh, who has played two Tests previously, has just started playing again after recovering from a serious back injury, while 22-year-old Rana has played only nine first-class matches. Rana, who represents Delhi, took two four-wicket hauls for India D in the Duleep Trophy in September and has 36 wickets at an average of 24.75 in first-class cricket. With Khaleel in the reserves and no Yash Dayal, India don't have a left-arm quick in the main squad.

India are the holders of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and have won their two previous tours of Australia by a 2-1 margin, in 2018-19 and 2020-21.

India squad for tour of Australia

Rohit Sharma (capt), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (wk), R Ashwin, R Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar

Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed