The flamboyant Indian all-rounder, Hardik Pandya, who had recently failed a fitness test, has not been considered for India’s tour of New Zealand. It is understood that Hardik is yet to be fit for competitive cricket and will now have to play at least one domestic game for Baroda before being considered for a national comeback.

Team India will now be locking horns with the Blackcaps in New Zealand for the complete tour. The tour will comprise of as many as 5 Twenty-20 Internations (T20Is), three One-Day Internationals (ODIs), and a couple of Test matches. With the Indian squad for the T20I series already announced, the ODI and Test squads are yet to be announced. After that tour, the men in blue will face South Africa will be three ODIs against South Africa in March.

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Pandya recently flunked the bowling workload monitoring test, which is one of the mandatory requirements after coming back from a back surgery. He had recently claimed that he would be fit for the second half of the New Zealand series but sources in the BCCI claim that it was the cricketer’s individual assessment.

Talking to PTI about Hardik, a senior BCCI official said, “He must have felt that he will be fit. But as we know he has failed the fitness test contrary to what his trainer S Rajnikant claims. It was never about Yo-Yo Test but about bowling fitness. He failed the workload test which broadly means failing a fitness test.”

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Pandya’s fitness is very important for India’s T20 World Cup campaign as his bowling and explosive hitting power gives India the required balance. He last played for India in September last year.

India’s Squads for the New Zealand tour

T20I squad: Virat Kohli (C), Rohit Sharma (VC), Sanju Samson, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant (WK), Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur

ODI squad: Virat Kohli (C), Rohit Sharma (VC), Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant (WK), Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur, Kedar Jadhav