Ahead of the crucial tour to South Africa, several regular Indian cricketers are busy playing for their respective state teams in between the break in the Sri Lanka series. On the other hand, players like Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel, Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and Dinesh Karthik are sweating it out at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru.

While Pandya has been rested form the ongoing Test series against Sri Lanka, it is understood that Chahal and Bumrah have been specifically told to avoid playing Ranji matches. One of the sources of TOI said, “Chahal had asked for permission to play for Haryana but he was not allowed to do so by the team management. Instead, he was asked to stay back at NCA after the T20I series against New Zealand a fortnight ago.”

He further added, “The idea is to preserve these players. They have been doing well for the ODI team and there’s no point in burning them out or risking injuries by playing domestic matches.”

Yuvraj has also been training at the NCA and not playing for Punjab. This has not gone well with some of the selection committee members, especially when he is struggling to make a comeback. Talking about the same, one of the BCCI officials said, “After a lot of effort over the years, India players were made to play Ranji Trophy while not playing for the national team and selections were done based on that. The Haryana team management wanted Chahal to play since six players are injured at the moment. Gujarat too needed Bumrah and Patel’s services but all of that has been ignored.”

It is also learned that Yuvraj has opted to attain the fitness level desired by the Indian team management. Amidst all this, the second Test match between India and Sri Lanka is starting tomorrow at Nagpur. With Bhuvi busy in his marriage and Shikhar Dhawan opting himself out of the second Test citing personal reasons, it will be interesting to see who replaces both of them.