THE focus has returned to the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) Centre of Excellence facilities with Ayush Mhatre sustaining a hamstring injury upon his return to first-class cricket. The talented Mumbaikar, who had almost missed the last six months of action after picking up a left-hamstring while on duty with the Chennai Super Kings, had returned to domestic action during Mumbai's Ranji Trophy opener against Chandigarh.
While running between the wickets in Mumbai's only innings on Day One, he felt something. He soldiered on before being dismissed for 40. After assessing the damage, Mhatre didn't take the field in Chandigarh's first innings as well as the second innings. The one thing to note is that this was the right hamstring so this seems to be an unrelated injury.
After the match on Tuesday, Mumbai captain Siddhesh Lad said: "It seems that he will not be with the team for some time now," Lad said. "The way he was limping in the match, it does not look like he would be available for the second or the third match. It happened while running...we had two or three simulations and club games and he also played at the BKC, and he was looking fine for the last three-four matches, but he felt something in his hamstring while taking a second run."
With the obvious caveat that injuries can occur to anybody at any time, this is another injury that has been sustained by a player who had spent months at the CoE, recovering from a previous injury till recently. "He worked really hard in the off-season because he was doing rehab with me only at BKC," the skipper said of the 19-year-old. "And he was working very hard because he used to come from Virar just to do his rehab and then go back. It happens, it's part of the game. But we will try and motivate him."
It's why this may increase the heat on the CoE. Another player who recently picked up an injury post being cleared to play by the facility was Hardik Pandya, who had spent a significant part of his September doing some range-hitting at the CoE. The all-rounder was scheduled to be part of the A series against the visiting Australian outfit before he picked up a right shin injury.
Of course, at some level, the CoE isn't just a rehab centre for the players even if a lot of the injured players — including Mayank Yadav, currently with the T20I team — report there for the purposes of recovery and rehab. "CoE is not merely a rehab centre," VVS Laxman had remarked during an interaction with select media in August. "There are bigger roles to play for it in helping cricketers achieve excellence.
"... when we send a fitness status report, the process is that the selector reaches out to the COE asking for the fitness report. We collect the correct fitness status and send a fitness status report to the selection committee chairman or chairperson in the women's selection committee, with a copy to obviously the head coach of both the teams and the BCCI."
Mhatre will now spend more time away from the game as he recovers yet another injury. And the focus will only increase on the COE as a result.
