Shreyas Iyer’s injury did not look that great: Rohit

Earlier yesterday (March 12), Indian star-batter Shreyas Iyer complained of a lower-back pain, which eventually ruled him out of the fourth Test here in Ahmedabad. As it stands, Iyer’s involvement in the ODI series is at huge risk. It is a recurrent back pain, which ruled him out of multiple games earlier in the year. 

Indian skipper Rohit Sharma post the series in the post-series press conference, revealed that the injury to the No.5 batter doesn’t look great, and also said that he is unaware of how long the Mumbaikar will be out of the game. 

“Poor guy. It just was such an unfortunate incident. He had to wait all day to bat and then when the day got over, the issue he had with his back, recurred. He was sent to the hospital to take scans. I don’t know the exact report of the scans, but he does not seem to be doing that well," Rohit told the reporters.

“Obviously, that’s why he’s not present here, so we don’t know the exact status of how long he will take to recover or when he will be back. When it happened, it did not look that great. I hope he recovers quickly and comes back and plays again," he added.

With the draw here in Ahmedabad, India have sealed themselves a place in the World Test Championship (WTC) final, where they will play Australia. But the biggest catch is there’s only a week between the Indian Premier League (IPL) final and the WTC final. Rohit reckoned that the players from teams eliminated will travel to the United Kingdom, in order to prepare for the ultimate Test battle. 

"I don't think it will be a huge problem but yeah, look I believe in preparation and preparations will be key for us come the finals. Around 21st May, there will be six teams who will possibly be out of IPL playoffs contention and so whichever players are available, we will try and find time to get them to the UK early as possible and get some time and we will monitor as much as possible," Rohit said.

"Look, I think it's quite critical for us, we're going to keep in constant touch with all players who are going to play that final and monitor their workload and see what's happening with them," Rohit said. 

"In fact we are sending some Dukes Balls to all fast bowlers and see if they get some time to bowl with that, but again it all depends on individuals, guys who will be part of finals are not the guys who have not played in UK and may be one or two guys here and there and rest all of us have played in that part of the world."

On the other hand, Australia’s stand-in captain, Steve Smith insisted that it will be a ‘great contest’ to play India at The Oval. 

"It's going to be great coming up against India in the final. The Oval, the wicket there can take spin at times particularly as the game wears on," Smith said. 

"So it could be interesting in terms of what sort of wicket we get. But it's a great place to play cricket. There's usually reasonable pace and bounce for an English wicket. It's probably as close as you get to Australia potentially in terms of pace and bounce. Yeah it's going to be a great Test match and the guys are looking forward to it."