By KL Rahul has been officially ruled out of the fourth Test against England in Ranchi after not fully recovering from a quadriceps injury that forced him to miss the games in Visakhapatnam and Rajkot.
The middle-order bat featured in the series opener in Hyderabad, registering scores of 86 and 22, but an injury sustained in that game forced him to miss the second Test. A BCCI release on February 12 ahead of the third Test in Rajkot had stated that Rahul had reached 90% of match fitness and that he had been progressing well at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru.
However, as per the board’s latest update, Rahul’s availability even for the final Test in Dharamsala is subject to fitness. Fellow Karnataka batter Devdutt Padikkal, who earned a maiden call-up to the Test squad on the back of impressive first-class form, retains his place in the squad.
The 31-year-old Rahul has been beset with fitness problems in the last 10 months. He underwent a thigh surgery for an injury he picked up during IPL 2023 and missed a large chunk of games. Since his return at the Asia Cup, however, Rahul had been in excellent touch across both the Test and the ODI formats before this latest setback.
Meanwhile, as reported by Cricbuzz, pace ace Jasprit Bumrah has been granted rest by the team management and will miss the Ranchi Test. This rest for Bumrah was given with an eye on his workload management given the upcoming schedule which includes an IPL campaign closely followed by the T20 World Cup in West Indies & the USA. Bumrah, who has taken a chart-leading 17 wickets at 13.64 in this series, has already sent down 80.5 overs through the course of the first three Tests.
Mukesh Kumar, who was released from the squad for the third Test, will now rejoin after taking a career-best match haul of 10 for 50 for Bengal against Bihar in the Ranji Trophy. His uncapped statemate Akash Deep is the third seamer in the squad.
India squad for the 4th Test: Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Rajat Patidar, Sarfaraz Khan, Devdutt Padikkal, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Dhruv Jurel (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep
