Sudharsan is batting again in Bengaluru, and India’s Colombo warm-up loses a day
India fly to Colombo on 4 August with their No. 3 still waiting on a fitness clearance, and with one day less of warm-up cricket than they had planned.
Aug 3, 2026
Sai Sudharsan has started batting again in the nets at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, which is the news India wanted before the squad flies to Colombo on 4 August. The left-hander has been working his way back from a minor big toe injury, and he was picked in the 15 for the two Tests in Sri Lanka on the condition that the COE signs him off.
The clearance he still needs
Being back in the nets is not the same as being cleared. The BCCI’s medical staff have to be satisfied that a toe problem, however small it sounds, will hold up across five days in Galle in the middle of August. Batting is the easy part of that test. Running between the wickets in heat, in spikes, on a surface that turns from day two onwards, is the part that finds a foot injury out.
The timing is tight. The squad’s first serious cricket is the practice game that starts three days after the flight.
What he did the last time he was in Sri Lanka
Sudharsan spent June and July on the island with India A and left as the leading run-scorer of the two unofficial Tests, with 332 runs from four innings at an average of 166. He made 132 in the first of them at Galle, 175 balls and 19 fours, on the ground where the first Test is played. He then went one better in the second match, turning an overnight 104 not out into 168, his best score for India A.
He also retired hurt in that first game, on 7 in the second innings, and was back batting a week later in the second.
That run of scores matters because his Test record does not yet look like his first-class one. He has 383 Test runs at a shade under 32, with three fifties and a highest score of 87, and no hundred. A No. 3 who has just made two centuries on the exact pitches India are about to play on has a strong case to keep the position, and the selectors clearly think so, because they named him while he was still being assessed.
Three days instead of four
The preparation itself has shrunk. Sri Lanka Cricket has confirmed that the warm-up match at the Nondescripts Cricket Club ground in Colombo, originally scheduled over four days, will now be played over three, from 7 to 9 August. No reason was given for the change.
A day sounds like very little until you count who needs it. Ravindra Jadeja has not played a Test since recovering from his elbow problem. Saransh Jain, the 33-year-old off-spinner, has never played one. Gurnoor Brar is uncapped. And Sudharsan, if he is passed fit, arrives with a foot he has not properly tested in a match. Four days of cricket would have given the bowlers two innings and the batters a second look at spin. Three days might not.
A squad already short of bodies
India travel without Jasprit Bumrah, ruled out on 2 August because the medical team was not convinced his left knee would survive a Test series, with Auqib Nabi called into the squad in his place. Washington Sundar misses at least the first Test with a hamstring injury. Harshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy were both out of the picture before the squad was picked.
Shubman Gill’s first subcontinental tour as captain therefore begins with a thin attack, a batting order that would look considerably better with a fit Sudharsan at three, and two Tests worth of World Test Championship points that India cannot really afford to split. Galle starts on 15 August, the SSC on 23 August.
The nets in Bengaluru are the small good news in all of that.