The spate of injuries has impacted the team balance across formats.
The Indian cricket team faces a severe injury crisis with key players sidelined, complicating squad selections across all three formats.
Players like Hardik Pandya, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana and Varun Chakaravarthy are out of action in white-ball cricket. The likes of Sai Sudharsan and Washington Sundar are also nursing injuries ahead of the two-Test series against Sri Lanka.
To add to India’s woes, ace pacer Jasprit Bumrah was ruled of the Sri Lanka Test series after failing to recover from an impact injury sustained on his left knee during the ODI series against England last month. The BCCI has named uncapped Jammu & Kashmir seamer Auqib Nabi as Bumrah’s replacement.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta addressed the injury setbacks hampering India’s team combinations lately.
Team India have got nearly two weeks' gap to prepare for the Sri Lanka series, having played their last international game on July 26. Dasgupta described this extended training period as a "dream preparation" for the team.
"In my opinion, this is a dream preparation for Team India. Now, how they use this time is an entirely different thing. If we compare the preparations with the Ireland and England tours, those were not ideal; it was like firefighting. Players were getting injured, players were unavailable. So, as a coach, you are not able to prepare anything. Just as you set a playing XI, someone gets injured, and then you have to change it. It will be rare for India to get 10-15 days to prepare for a series. It might not be practically possible to get 10-15 days before every series," Dasgupta said.
"Gautam Gambhir will prefer preparation camps like this because he is actually getting to coach players. Just a day or two before a match, you are not coaching, you are managing players. I will not be surprised if the Indian coaching staff are really happy because this is a chance where they can actually coach players rather than manage them," he added.
India’s Test tour of Sri Lanka is slated to get underway on August 15 in Galle. The second Test will be played in Colombo from August 23-27.
This series is extremely crucial for Shubman Gill's men as they aim to climb from fifth position in the 2025-27 World Test Championship (WTC) standings