Rohit Sharma On Mohammed Shami: India captain Rohit Sharma dropped a bombshell ahead of the India vs New Zealand 1st Test at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. Speaking at the pre-match press conference, Rohit revealed that Mohammed Shami's recovery has been hit with a setback with a fresh knee injury surfacing and spoiling his plans. He hinted that Shami could miss at least a few Test matches of India's Australia tour, if not the entire five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) series.


"He is working with the physios, with the doctors at NCA. We are keeping our fingers crossed," the Indian skipper said on Tuesday (October 15). "We want him to be 100% fit, more than anything else. We don't want to bring an undercooked Shami to Australia," he added.


"We don't want to heavily reliant on a few individuals. That is not the right thing to do. We want to look at the future and try and make sure we get the right guys in as well," the Indian skipper said.


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Meanwhile, Rohit hinted that some of the players who are travelling with the Indian team as reserves might be on that flight to Australia and even get to make their Test debut.


"Tomorrow, if we feel like they are ready to take that role (replacing an injured pacer), they should be ready for it. They have obviously played a few games before we made this announcement. They have played the Duleep Trophy, Irani Trophy as well. So, we just want to make sure that they are monitored quite well. Their workloads have been taken care of," Rohit said.


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Notably, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mayank Yadav and Prasidh Krishna are the players who have been named in India's reserves for the home series against New Zealand. All the four players are likely to be part of India's T20I series against South Africa where they are monitored and probably asked to come to Australia.


"In the short period of time, they have shown they have ability as well. We want to keep them with the team and see whether they will be ready for international cricket or not. Especially Test cricket because Test cricket is a different ball game compared to white ball cricket. We want to see what they can offer us," Rohit said.


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With Shami missing out, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj are likely to be India's frontline pacers with Akash Deep having done well to fill the place of the third seamer. All others will be vying for the fourth pace bowling option which could be the demand of the conditions in Australia.