INJURY BLOW
KL Rahul will miss the entirety of the South Africa series. © BCCI
KL Rahul and Kuldeep Yadav have been ruled out of the South Africa series. Rishabh Pant takes over from Rahul as the India captain for the series while Hardik Pandya has been announced as his deputy.
The selection committee hasn’t named any replacements for the two injured cricketers.
India’s T20I squad: Rishabh Pant (Captain)(wk), Hardik Pandya (vice-captain), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik
Rahul has been ruled out owing to a right groin injury while Kuldeep Yadav picked up an injury while batting in the nets a couple of days out from the series.
“Both the cricketers will now report to the NCA where the medical team will assess them further and decide on the future course of treatment,” the BCCI further said in the release.
Rahul did not attend India’s practice session on Tuesday (June 8). “He felt pain and he was checked on Wednesday morning. The team management decided that as a measure of precaution, as well keeping the England series in mind, he will be withdrawn from the South Africa series,” said a source in the knowledge of the development.
It’s also understood that Rahul’s injury has been a recurrent issue and was also why he missed the Sri Lanka series. During the just-concluded Indian Premier League (IPL), he went for scans but luckily for him, nothing serious was detected and he could comfortably play.
It is still not known if Rahul will be a part of the England tour for which he was named vice-captain under Rohit Sharma.
The first indication of Rahul’s unavailability surfaced when the scheduled pre-match press conference on Wednesday evening got delayed.
Rahul’s absence provides an opportunity for Pant the captain. It has been a meteoric rise for the 24-year-old Delhi Capitals skipper, who returned to India’s T20I setup a little over a year ago, in the home series against England.
Source: Cricbuzz