Team India head coach Rahul Dravid on Wednesday gave a big update on the health of Indian captain Rohit Sharma, who had tested positive for COVID-19 earlier. Speaking to the media in a virtual press conference, Dravid spoke about whether Rohit Sharma would be available for the game or not. It is important to note that Rohit had tested positive for COVID-19 during the warm-up fixture against Leicestershire.
“So the update on Rohit is that he is being monitored by our medical team, he is not yet been ruled out. Obviously, he needs to get the negative test to be available. We will keep monitoring him, we have still got close to 36 hours to go so he will have a test later tonight and one maybe tomorrow morning as well. We will see, it is really up to the medical team and sports science team to decide on that. We will keep monitoring.”
India had played out a draw in their warm-up game against Leicestershire while England defeated New Zealand 3-0 in the three-match Test series.
There have been reports doing the rounds that Jasprit Bumrah will lead India in the Test match if Rohit fails to recover in time. To this Dravid said that it is better that the communication comes from the official source.
“As to the answer to your next question (whether Bumrah would be captain), I think it is probably better that the communication comes officially from the official sources. I am not sure whether Chetan (Sharma) is but you know, once we have exact clarity on Rohit then I think you will hear from official sources. It is not for me to give out official communication,” Dravid said.
When asked whether the situation regarding Rohit Sharma has disrupted the team’s preparations for the Test, Dravid said: “Look, it is what it is. When I took this job, even I would not have predicted that there would be so many captains in the last 6-7 months. It happens right, there have been some unfortunate injuries to people. Even here, it is quite unfortunate what has happened to Rahul and Rohit in the last three weeks. Sometimes we have had to balance out the workloads. We just have to react to that.”
“It is not something that you start off thinking that this is what I want to do, but if the situation arises, you react to it. Despite the number of captains we have had, we have played some good cricket in the last 6-8 months. Yes, obviously the South Africa Test series was the one where I would have certainly liked to win that series after going 1-0 up. Even in that, we were not outplayed. We were very close in those games. Some of our players were also not available for that Test series. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that we do not have to deal with these situations. We have to react, we are clear about our communication with people. If something happens, we have our plans and contingency plan,” he added.
India Test Squad: Rohit Sharma (c), 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.
