Rohit Sharma’s Australia omission: the plot gets thicker

Not long after Ganguly warns of the risk of the batsman rupturing his hamstring, the 33-year-old opens MI’s innings

Rohit Sharma.

Hours after BCCI president Sourav Ganguly stated that Rohit Sharma’s omission from India’s tour of Australia was due to the possibility of a recurrence of his “hamstring tear”, Rohit walked out to open the Mumbai Indians innings against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL on Tuesday.

Ever since injuring himself during MI’s double-Super Over loss to Kings XI Punjab last month, there have been more questions than answers about Rohit’s fitness status.

Hamstring strain: MI

While MI referred to it as a “hamstring strain” on October 23, the BCCI, when announcing the squad on October 26, said that Rohit was being “monitored”, without specifying the nature of the injury.

Rohit’s medical report says he could be in danger of injuring himself again, says Ravi Shastri

“You don’t want him to get injured again. He has a hamstring tear and it will get ruptured again. It will then [take] longer for him to come back. But yes, there are people working with him,” Ganguly told

PTI on Tuesday. The BCCI chief added that the MI medical team had been working on Rohit along with Team India physiotherapist Nitin Patel.

Second surprise

However, the franchise and the batsman sprung a second surprise in as many weeks later on Tuesday when Rohit walked out for the toss against SRH.

While he wasn’t asked about his fitness in detail during the toss interview, the decision appeared to be a ploy to test his fitness ahead of the playoffs.

Interestingly, hours after the BCCI had announced the squad for the Australia tour last week, Rohit had had a full-fledged net session.

Lack of clarity

The sequence of events highlights the lack of clarity surrounding the injury management mechanism of centrally contracted cricketers.

Despite the BCCI medical team not deeming him fit for international cricket, his franchise may have cleared him for an IPL game since the BCCI fitness protocols are not binding on franchises.

It will be interesting to see how much cricket Rohit plays over the next week and whether the BCCI deems that sufficient to include him in its plans for Australia.