Injured KL Rahul doubtful for one-off Test match against England

KL Rahul's participation in the one-off Test against England next month appears to be in jeopardy due to a groyne injury, which has also kept him out of the ongoing five-match T20I series against South Africa, which the Men in Blue are already trailing 0-2.

With key players Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Jasprit Bumrah resting as part of workload management, Rahul was named captain for the T20I series. However, due to an injury sustained on the eve of this bilateral series, wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant was named captain.

Meanwhile, Rahul is undergoing rehabilitation at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru, and it is unclear how long the Karnataka cricketer will be out of action.

According to reports in Cricbuzz, “it is learnt that diagnosis of his complaint is not complete yet. Sources have indicated that his participation in the England series is doubtful but could not clarify if he will have to skip the white ball games as well.”

Meanwhile, it has also been learnt that that the Indian team will fly off for England in two groups. “The first batch of the Indian team will fly to England on Friday (June 16) and another batch, including coach Rahul Dravid, Pant and Shreyas Iyer, on June 20,” stated the report further.

The one-off Test match will take place between July 1 and 5. This is the rescheduled fifth and final Test match, which was delayed due to COVID-19 cases in the Indian camp. This game was originally scheduled for September of last year in Manchester. Notably, India leads the stalemate series 2-1.

At the same time, it has been reported that the selection committee may not name a replacement player for KL Rahul, despite the fact that three openers are already included in the officially announced 17-man squad. Apart from Rahul, the other openers are skipper Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill.

Here’s the Indian squad for the one-off Test match against England: Rohit Sharma (c), KL Rahul (vc) Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rishabh Pant (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohd Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Prasidh Krishna