India Under-19 and Australia Under-19 shift from white-ball to red-ball cricket on Sunday, with the 1st Youth Test starting at the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot. The four-day match is the next leg of a multi-format tour that has already produced a clean sweep for the hosts in the short format, at the same venue.
India Under-19 enter the Test series full of confidence, having completed a 3-0 whitewash of Australia Under-19 in the preceding Youth ODI series under captain Lakshya Raichandani. The series was built on two separate individual hundreds: Yashbardhan Chauhan made 122 in the second ODI to hand India an unassailable 2-0 lead, and Raichandani followed it up with a century of his own in the series-completing third match. Both players are part of the squad that now moves into the multi-day fixtures.
Youth Test cricket serves a different purpose than the ODIs that preceded it — it's a proving ground for technique and temperament against the new ball and spin over longer spells, rather than just power-hitting. For a talent pipeline that has already produced current India internationals, how both sets of teenagers translate their white-ball form into a four-day contest will be closely watched by state and national selectors, even if the games themselves fly under the radar compared to the senior team's fixtures.
With India Under-19 arriving on the back of a dominant one-day series and playing at a ground they have just become familiar with, the hosts will start as favourites. Australia Under-19 will be looking to use the format switch to reset the tour and test India's batting depth against the new ball over four days rather than fifty overs. The match runs through September 30, giving both attacks time to bowl in twin innings rather than chase quick wickets inside a fixed overs limit.
Age-group tours like this one are where next-generation names first get noticed by a wider audience — several members of India's current senior white-ball and Test setups came through exactly this kind of bilateral Under-19 cricket before ever appearing in the IPL. A strong four-day showing from either Chauhan or Raichandani would add to a series that has already been productive for both, and it's the kind of form domestic and franchise scouts tend to note well before a wider audience does.
Session-by-session updates from Rajkot are available on SportGod's live matches page, with more domestic and youth cricket coverage on SportGod's blog and AI-powered match previews on SportGod's predictions page.
Match dates, venue and the ODI series results and centuries are verified against same-day tournament reporting, current as of September 27, 2026.
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