Aakash Chopra,Rinku Singh
Aakash Chopra (Image Credit: Twitter)

The newly-added franchise to the IPL, Lucknow, will be worried over their captain, KL Rahul’s injury concerns after the latter was ruled out of the entire Sri Lanka series at home, believes Aakash Chopra. The BCCI announced the T20I, Test squads for the home series and Rahul was missing in both.

Notably, Washington Sundar has also been going through injury and fitness issues. He sustained a fractured finger ahead of IPL 2021 phase two and also returned positive for Covid-19 ahead of the ODI series against South Africa. Although he played the ODI series against West Indies, he didn’t feature in the T20Is.

KL Rahul and Washington Sundar have been ruled out for the entire Sri Lankan tour. The questions do come up. There is an issue with KL Rahul’s fitness and Lucknow must be sweating. For Washington Sundar, it’s been so long and an off-spinner getting injured so often?

Wasim Jaffer on KL Rahul
Photo Credit: (AP)

He had Covid then got injured, then again injured – we haven’t seen him play in the last eight months. He got injured before the T20 World Cup and since we have hardly seen him play – just a couple of matches here and there. Now he’s disappeared from the scene again and has picked up a long-term injury,” Chopra told on his YouTube channel.

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“When playing for India, there’s an overwhelming concept of workload management” – Aakash Chopra

Chopra also made a point regarding the work management issue that has been brought up in the Indian national team far too often. He insisted that the players take breaks while playing for the national team but not when they are representing their IPL franchises.

Think about it. When you are playing for India, there’s an overwhelming concept of workload management, of not playing all players together, rotation and bubble fatigue and all of that.

“We never hear that in the IPL, a player has been rested due to bubble fatigue and stress. Inadvertently, the eminence of club cricket has skyrocketed slightly uncontrollably.

KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma
KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma. (Photo: Twitter)

The franchise, which signs cricketers in huge amounts, say ‘Do whatever you can. Even don’t play for India but I have paid you 15 crore, play all matches for me. I won’t give you any rest unless you are injured. You take all the rest you need while playing for India…

“We always said playing for India will be pre-eminent but it’s not like that anymore. You are seeing rotation there but you won’t see any changes once the IPL start – Shardul Thakur, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Rishabh Pant won’t miss a single match,” Chopra added.

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India announced their new Test captain ahead of the Test series against Sri Lanka, with Rohit Sharma taking over the mantle.

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