Shubman Gill has been asked by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to head back home after being ruled out of the five-match Test series against England, slated to kick off from 4 August. Gill was diagnosed with a stress injury in his shin. It is believed that Gill was carrying the injury for a while and it got aggravated during the ICC World Test Championship final. Meanwhile, no replacement has been named yet for the young gun.
Reports in Cricbuzz state that the BCCI is not pondering the option of a replacement right away but they are in a dilemma of sorts for a potentially tricky situation if one of the openers gets infected just like the England team which had to undergo quarantine after three players and four support staffs returned Covid positive. Ben Stokes will be leading an entirely new team in the limited-overs tourney against Pakistan.
The team management has made it pretty clear that KL Rahul is not being looked into as an opening option and could be tried out in the middle order. It means that barring Rohit Sharma, only Mayank Agarwal is the other opening option in the 20-member squad.
Abhimanyu Easwaran is part of the extended 24 member squad and could get an opportunity in the series. The team management has left it to the selectors to name the replacement for Gill.
"They have left it to the selectors to name a replacement, be it Prithvi Shaw or Devdutt Padikkal or whoever," an official close to the developments told Cricbuzz.
It will be a difficult ask for BCCI to fly any of the players to England with most of the available options already in Sri Lanka preparing for the ODI and T20I series against the home team. Just like India, Sri Lanka is also part of the UK Government’s red list. Only British or Irish nationals are allowed to enter the UK while the rest have to undergo a minimum of 10 days quarantine period. While Rohit Sharma underwent self-isolation in Australia before taking part in the last two Tests, it will be difficult for BCCI to suddenly arrange for a 10-day quarantine for a player in foreign conditions.