Karnataka pacer Prasidh Krishna, who made his ODI debut for India in the home series against England in March, has been added to India’s squad for the penultimate Test of the five-match series starting at The Oval on Thursday.
The BCCI mentioned in a media release on Wednesday that the pacer has been added to the squad on the request of the team management. Prasidh is now the seventh pacer in the squad after Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav and Shardul Thakur.
Prasidh is a tall pacer who has most probably been picked as a backup for Ishant, who seemed out of rhythm in the last Test match.
“He’s been included in the team mainly considering all the workload management issues,” Bharat Arun, India’s bowling coach, said on the eve of the Oval Test.
“Nothing more to it than that. Ishant’s form in the last game was a bit of concern but I think we have sorted things out. Prasidh Krishna is just a precautionary inclusion.”
India skipper Virat Kohli had also ruled out Ishant’s bad performance as a cause of concern. But he did say that they were looking at rotating the pacers in order to manage their workload.
“That’s bound to happen,” Kohli had said when he was asked whether any of the fast bowlers could be rested.
“It’s a very logical and sensible thing to do – you obviously don’t want to push individuals to a place where they break. We will have that conversation with individuals and see who is placed where physically and who needs to have a game off. You obviously can’t expect with a short turnaround like this for guys to play four Test matches in a row so we’ll have to assess who are the guys that will be given that many number of days to recover and then be okay for the fifth one [Manchester].”
Among the Indian fast bowlers, Bumrah has bowled the most number of overs (108). Siraj isn’t far away having delivered 101 overs, whereas Shami has delivered 97. Ishant, who has played only two Tests in the series, has delivered 56 overs so far.
None of the Indian fast bowlers have bowled in the nets since Tuesday as the management has decided to give them some much needed rest ahead of the match on Thursday.
Updated India squad for the fourth Test against England
Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (capt), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-capt), Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Abhimanyu Easwaran, Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, Prasidh Krishna
