The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah said that if a cricketer goes out from the national side because of injury they they will have to play the domestic game to make a comeback for team India. Shah revealed that when Jadeja got injured he (Jay Shah) called him and asked him to play domestic cricket. Jay Shah also added that Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are exceptions because of injury risk.
BCCI have announced the squad for the Duleep Trophy where Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer will make their red ball comeback after getting snubbed from the central contract list. Ishan last featured for India in 2023 and Shreyas Iyer last featured in the ODI series against Sri Lanka where visitors India lost the series by 2-0.
Speaking to Times of India, Shah recalled that when Jadeja had injured his knee during the 2022 Asia Cup, he had called him up and informed that in a bid to stage a comeback post recovery, he would have to play in domestic cricket to prove himself. Jadeja later turned up for Saurashtra in the 2022/23 Ranji Trophy season before making the Indian Test squad for the the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2022.
“We have been little strict. When Ravindra Jadeja had got injured, I was the one who called him and asked him to play a domestic game. It's certain now, whoever gets injured and goes out, can only come into the Indian team after proving his fitness in domestic cricket. But it doesn't make sense to add to Virat and Rohit's load by asking them to play domestic cricket. They run the risk of getting injured. You also need to look at England and Australia. None of their top players play domestic cricket. We must treat our players respectfully and not treat them like servants. If you look Duleep Trophy squad, apart from Rohit and Virat rest are going to play. It's because of the harsh steps I have taken, Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan are playing Duleep Trophy,” he said.
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Duleep Trophy squads
Team A: Shubman Gill (C), Mayank Agarwal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel, KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Tanush Kotian, Kuldeep Yadav, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Khaleel Ahmed, Avesh Khan, Vidwath Kaverappa, Kumar Kushagra, Shaswat Rawat.
Team B: Abhimanyu Easwaran (C), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sarfaraz Khan, Rishabh Pant, Musheer Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy*, Washington Sundar, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohd Siraj, Yash Dayal, Mukesh Kumar, Rahul Chahar, R Sai Kishore, Mohit Awasthi, N Jagadeesan (WK).
Team C: Ruturaj Gaikwad (C), Sai Sudharsan, Rajat Patidar, Abishek Porel (WK), Suryakumar Yadav, B Indrajith, Hrithik Shokeen, Manav Suthar, Umran Malik, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Anshul Khamboj, Himanshu Chauhan, Mayank Markande, Aryan Juyal (WK), Sandeep Warrier.
Team D: Shreyas lyer (C), Atharva Taide, Yash Dubey, Devdutt Padikkal, Ishan Kishan (WK), Ricky Bhui, Saransh Jain, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Aditya Thakare, Harshit Rana, Tushar Deshpande, Akash Sengupta, KS Bharat (WK), Saurabh Kumar.
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