Jamshedpur: Mahendra Singh Dhoni will lead the 15-member Jharkhand squad in the Buchi Babu Memorial Tournament starting August 14 in Chennai.

The regular captain of the Ranji team, Sumit Panda, is pursuing his studies abroad and has declared himself unavailable for the tournament, which paved the way for Dhoni, the ’keeper in the Indian one-day team, president of Jharkhand State Cricket Association, Amitabh Choudhury said here on Sunday.

Middle-order batsman C.M. Jha was named vice-captain, he said.

Choudhury said Dhoni will also lead the state team in the Ranji Trophy if he is available.

The SQUAD

M.S. Dhoni (cap.), C.M. Jha (vice-cap.), S.S. Rao, Manish Vardhan, Arun Vidhyarthi, Ravish Kumar, Virendra Choudhury, Manish Kumar, Fasi-Uddin, Mihir Diwakar, Sanjiv Gupta, Sujit Roy, Kamal Kumar Singh, Sahid Khan, Sunny Gupta; Manager-cum-coach: Ashish Sinha