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Reports suggest Shreyas Iyer to skip surgery to play ODI World Cup

Injured Indian batter Shreyas Iyer will not undergo surgery and will rehabilitate instead before making a decision on the treatment that has to be followed, reports emerged on Thursday.

SportsTak

• Fri • 24 Mar 2023

Injured Indian batter Shreyas Iyer will not undergo surgery and will rehabilitate instead before making a decision on the treatment that has to be followed, reports emerged on Thursday.

These reports add that the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru has recommended surgery, the player wants to try to manage the injury without an operation. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Indian team management will be informed of the final decisions taken.

What is left to be decided is whether Iyer will turn out for the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), of whom he is the skipper, with reports suggesting that he is ruled out of the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) season. KKR start their campaign against the Punjab Kings (PBKS) on April 1.

However, Iyer's bigger concern will be his inability to recover in time for the 2023 ODI World Cup to be held in India in October-November. A surgery will rule the middle-order batter out for at least six-seven months with no promises that he will make it back for the marquee 50-over tournament.

Iyer's back issues re-emerged during India's fourth Test against Australia in Ahmedabad, ruling him out of the tournament and the following ODI series which India lost 2-1.

This is also a major blow to the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) as they will have to appoint a new captain. Nitish Rana, Tim Southee and Shakib Al Hasan are a few candidates for KKR's captaincy in the upcoming season. For India, Suryakumar Yadav, who has been deemed as his replacement, had an extremely poor series against Australia after he was Golden Duck in all three matches.

Speaking about Iyer's injury after India's draw against Australia in the third Test, Team India skipper Rohit Sharma said, "Poor guy. It was such an unfortunate incident. He had to wait all day to bat and then when the day got over, the issue he had with his back, recurred. He was sent to the hospital to take scans. I don’t know the exact report of the scans, but he does not seem to be doing that well.