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Aakash Chopra comments on KL Rahul and Washington Sundar’s fitness issues
By SMCS - Feb 20, 2022 1:25 pm
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Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has expressed his concern over the recurring fitness issues of KL Rahul and all-rounder Washington Sundar. He believes that Rahul’s new IPL franchise, the Lucknow Super Giants, will be concerned as well.

kl rahul
KL Rahul

Meanwhile, Team India have announced their Test and T20I squads for the upcoming series against Sri Lanka and both Rahul and Sundar missed out due to hamstring injuries. Rahul had a massive workload in 2021 whereas Sundar had earlier missed out on the second half of IPL 2021 due to a fractured finger. He then tested positive for COVID-19 and now he was eventually ruled out of the ODI series against South Africa as well as the ODIs against West Indies.

Speaking in a video on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra said: “KL Rahul and Washington Sundar have been ruled out for the entire Sri Lankan tour. The questions do come up. There is an issue with KL Rahul’s fitness and Lucknow must be sweating. For Washington Sundar, it’s been so long and an off-spinner getting injured so often? He had Covid then got injured, then again injured – we haven’t seen him play in the last eight months. He got injured before the T20 World Cup and since we have hardly seen him play – just a couple of matches here and there. Now he’s disappeared from the seen again and has picked up a long-term injury.”

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Aakash Chopra continued: “Rohit Sharma isn’t going to get any rest now. He’s the new captain of the new era. He’s playing ODIs, T20Is, then Tests, then the entire IPL, then he’ll be expected to play throughout the tour of England. Rohit Sharma is going to be under the pump quite a bit because neither he’ll take rest here nor for Mumbai Indians.”

rohit sharma
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli

Meanwhile, Rohit Sharma has been named captain in the longer format. He will lead the team in the Sri Lanka series. However, Aakash Chopra has also shed light on the players like Virat Kohli, Shardul Thakur and Rishabh Pant who have given rest in this series as well.

Chopra explained: “Think about it. When you are playing for India, there’s an overwhelming concept of workload management, of not playing all players together, rotation and bubble fatigue and all of that. We never hear that in the IPL, that a player has been rested due to bubble fatigue and stress. Inadvertently, the eminence of club cricket has skyrocketed slightly uncontrollably.”

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“The franchise, which signs cricketers in huge amounts, say ‘Do whatever you can. Evem don’t play for India but I have paid you 15 crore, play all matches for me. I won’t give you any rest unless you are injured. You take all the rest you need while playing for India… We always said playing for India will be pre-eminent but it’s not like that anymore. You are seeing rotation there but you won’t see any changes once the IPL start – Shardul Thakur, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant won’t miss a single match,” Aakash Chopra concluded.