Veteran India speedster Mohammed Shami has been ruled out of the India-New Zealand Test series. While it is a huge setback for Team India as they look for a win in the Test series against New Zealand and the five-match Test series in Australia, captain Rohit Sharma confirmed that they would not want to rush him back into action as his recovery had hit a hurdle.

“To be honest, right now it is very difficult for us to make a call on him [Shami] whether he will be fit for this series or Australia series,” said Rohit Sharma in a press conference ahead of the Bengaluru Test. “He recently had a setback. He had a swelling in his knee, which was quite unusual while he was in the process of getting fit, getting close to 100%. That put him back a little bit in his recovery.”

“So he had to start again fresh. Right now, he is at NCA. He is working with the physios, the doctors at NCA. We are keeping our fingers crossed. We want him to be fit. We want him to be 100% fit. More than anything else, we don’t want to bring an undercooked Shami to Australia. That is not going to be the right decision for us,” he again shared.

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However, Shami had suffered a left Achilles heel injury after the ODI World Cup last year, and now the knee complication has made things worse which has left Rohit Sharma thinking of when he could return to the squad during the Australia series as well.

“It is quite tough for a fast bowler having missed so much of cricket. Then suddenly to come out and be at his best, it is not ideal. We want to give him enough time to recover and be 100% fit. The physios, the trainers, the doctors have set a road map for him. He is supposed to play a couple of games before he plays international cricket. We will see where he is at after this New Zealand series. Then take a call at what stage of Australia he will be fit for us,” he again said.

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Meanwhile, Team India have added “traveling reserves” for the Test series against New Zealand – Harshit Rana, Mayank Yadav and Nitish Reddy. On the other hand, Prasidh Krishna, who was expected to be with the team, reportedly faced another setback during Karnataka’s Ranji Trophy as well. He could manage to bowl only eight overs of the 140 that Karnataka bowled against Madhya Pradesh as well. Rohit Sharma also mentioned that there will be a chance to be considered for the Australia series as well.

“The reason we wanted to keep them close to us was because we are thinking of them to take them to Australia. So we just want to monitor them and see their workload. A lot of these guys have injuries in the past. So it’s important that we try and build them up and see what kind of options do we have. Like I said, we want to create bench strength. We want to create a group of fast bowlers where we have 8 or 9 options with us. It’s not about 3 or 4 options. So we want to try and do that,” Rohit Sharma concluded.