Former Indian wicket-keeper Deep Dasgupta has opened up on Team India’s injury crisis ahead of the two-match Test series against Sri Lanka. Dasgupta opined that when it looks like India is building a stable playing XI, a injury happens, which perturbs the final combination.
Indian team has been plagued by numerous injury woes in the recent past. Hardik Pandya and Nitish Kumar Reddy are currently recovering from a quadriceps injury. Furthermore, players like Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana, Prince Yadav and Washington Sundar are dealing with respective injuries.
Moreover, ace pacer Jasprit Bumrah was ruled out of the upcoming two-match Test series against Sri Lanka due to a knee injury, which he suffered in the ODI series against England.
“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 tour, that was not ideal, that 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 or the other gets injured, then they have to change it. It will be rare that India gets 10-15 days to prepare for a series. It might not be practically possible to get 10-15 days before a series,” Deep Dasgupta said on his YouTube channel.
India is all set to play a warm-up match before the Test series against Sri Lanka. The visitors travelled to the Island nation on August 4 and would look to adapt to the new conditions. Dasgupta reckons head coach Gautam Gambhir and co. will be happy with the team’s preparation.
“Gautam Gambhir will prefer preparation camps like this because he is actually getting to coach players. Just a day or two before the 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 the chance where they can actually coach a player, rather than managing,” Deep Dasgupta opined.
“I’m really happy and glad the team has reached quite early, and they have got the time to prepare for this series. The current idea should be to take one Test at a time, focus on preparation, and how you can prepare and set the team up for the future. Obviously, you would want to win every match and series, but if there is a priority, it should be improving the team, especially on spinning tracks. We all know how our recent record on spinning tracks at home has been. That is an area where a lot of work needs to be done,” he concluded.
The first Test match between India and Sri Lanka will be played at Galle from August 15 onwards.
