Shamik Chakrabarty & Subhayan Chakraborty
On March 2, RevSportz wrote about how Shreyas Iyer has been playing through pain and that his exclusion from the list of the BCCI’s centrally contracted players might not be a fair call. As it turned out, the middle-order batsman, who captains Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, might miss the initial stages of the premier T20 league.
Iyer’s back spasms resurfaced during the ongoing Ranji Trophy final between Mumbai and Vidarbha. He experienced it while batting in the second innings, when he scored 95. Then, he didn’t take the field for two days and went for a scan to a hospital.
Iyer, it is learnt, was scheduled to come to Kolkata on Friday to join the KKR camp. He was also supposed to take part at a promotional event for the franchise on March 18. But as per protocol, he now needs to report at the NCA.
An injured player must get a clearance certificate from the NCA to be available for the IPL. But there’s a catch. This is applicable to the contracted players. Iyer doesn’t have a contract at the moment, and his future course of action needs to be seen. As things stand, his participation in the IPL, at least in the initial phase, is in serious jeopardy.
RevSportz earlier reported that the BCCI dropped Iyer, along with wicketkeeper-batter Ishan Kishan, from the list of centrally contracted players for ostensibly not adhering to BCCI secretary Jay Shah’s directive of playing red-ball domestic cricket. The common perception was that Iyer’s show of arrogance didn’t serve him well. But there are two sides to every story and those who are close to the player feel that the 29-year-old has been treated unfairly.
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
Skipping the Ranji quarters, not reporting at NCA and losing the central contract; but Shreyas Iyer’s side of the story, too, deserves a mention
✍️@shamik100#ShreyasIyer #INDvsENGTest https://t.co/ONQOaACyJA
— RevSportz (@RevSportz) March 2, 2024
The chain of events was like this. After the second Test against England, Iyer informed the team management about persistent back pain that was impeding him from spending a long time at the crease. Then, he was dropped for the last three Tests and asked to go and play the Ranji Trophy. It is learnt that Iyer called Mumbai chief selector Raju Kulkarni, telling him that his back trouble would force him to opt out of the Ranji Trophy quarter-final against Baroda. He didn’t report to the National Cricket Academy and an email from Nitin Patel, the head of sports science and medicine at the NCA, declared him fit.