CHENNAI: The BCCI’s decision to pull Hardik Pandya out of New Zealand bound India A squad at the last moment has again put a question mark over the injury-management system. As per routine procedures, the selectors are given fitness updates on each player before picking a squad. So it can be assumed that when they named the A team on December 23, they had selected Pandya after he was declared fit.
However, before India A departed on Saturday, Pandya was withdrawn from the squad on Friday, leaving the selectors to name Vijay Shankar as replacement. It’s understood that the decision was taken after Pandya’s trainer S Rajinikanth, who has been working with him since he underwent a surgery in London last year, didn’t want to rush his return because of the nature of the problem.
It’s learnt that Pandya has been undergoing rehabilitation in Mumbai instead of the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru, where recovering players go through their paces. But it’s not clear who declared him fit when the selectors picked him in the A squad. News that he is not fit yet has surprised even the team management, which was expecting him back for the T20Is against New Zealand.
It is learnt that neither the physios at NCA or those who are with the Indian team were told about the need to manage Pandya’s workload until Friday, as they were under the impression that he was fit. Though he didn’t suffer any new injury after being selected, nobody in the BCCI seem to have an answer why the workload management aspect wasn’t brought up when the selectors met on December 23.
Pandya’s case comes a month after it came to light that Jasprit Bumrah too didn’t use the NCA facilities and chose to train on his own instead. Despite directions from BCCI president Sourav Ganguly that all the players should report to NCA, it seems not all are paying heed to them.
There are concerns in the BCCI that players are preferring to use own trainers and physios or those from their respective IPL franchises, which is making things complicated. While franchises do take care of their players when they get injured, them bypassing the BCCI protocol hasn’t gone well with some.
Although BCCI is aware that players have lost faith in NCA when it comes to dealing with injuries, sources point out that unless they come to the facility, they won’t be able to assess the improvements they have made.
“When a player gets injured, he should report to the NCA. But that hasn’t been a norm among players. Bhuvneshwar, Shaw, Vijay Shankar, Deepak Chahar have been at the NCA recently. Though there was delay in diagnosing Bhuvneshwar’s injury, NCA at least kept all concerned parties in the loop,” sources tracking developments told this newspaper.
The Pandya episode is likely to make the BCCI adopt a stricter policy wherein injured players will have to get tests done at NCA before being deemed fit. The BCCI is also exploring the idea of players proving their fitness in domestic matches before returning to the national fold, a policy that was mandatory till 2017.