The BCCI will review how India manage injuries once the Sri Lanka Tests are done
India’s selectors picked Jasprit Bumrah for the Sri Lanka Tests expecting him to be fit. He is not, and the board has lined up a formal review of how it manages injuries.
Aug 4, 2026
A squad announcement is meant to be the end of a process. India’s for the Sri Lanka Tests has turned into the start of one.
The selectors were told he would be there
Jasprit Bumrah was named in the 15 on 28 July subject to a final fitness test, rehabbed his left knee at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, and was withdrawn from both Tests on Monday because the discomfort had not gone away. He hurt the knee fielding in the second one-day international against England at Cardiff in July.
The sequence is what has irritated people inside the board. Ajit Agarkar’s selection panel picked a squad believing Bumrah would be available for a series that starts in Galle on 15 August. By the time the medical picture was clear the names were already public, and Auqib Nabi was being called up as a replacement for a bowler nobody in Indian cricket can actually replace.
Agarkar spoke to VVS Laxman, who heads cricket at the Centre of Excellence, in a virtual meeting on Monday. What follows is bigger. A formal BCCI review of how injuries are being managed is expected once the Sri Lanka tour is done, convened by secretary Devajit Saikia, with Laxman in the room. Gautam Gambhir and Agarkar are both waiting on it.
Who is under the scanner
Head physiotherapist Kamlesh Jain is the name that keeps appearing. He came in from Kolkata Knight Riders in June 2022, taking over from Nitin Patel, who moved to the academy in Bengaluru. Reports also put team doctor Rizwan Khan under scrutiny, along with the sports science operation at the Bengaluru high performance centre, currently run on an interim basis by Dhananjay Kaushik.
“The role of head physio Kamlesh Jain is under the scanner, as is that of the experts at the CoE,” a source told CricketAddictor. “These injury concerns aren’t ideal because both the captain and coach have regularly struggled to field a full-strength playing XI.”
The questions being asked are not about whether players get hurt. Fast bowlers get hurt. They are about whether return-to-play protocols are applied the same way in every case, whether the rehab timelines coming out of Bengaluru are realistic, and whether the people signing players off are flagging risk clearly enough to selectors who then have to pick them.
One ODI in Cardiff took out two of them
Bumrah is the loudest absence but the England white-ball leg did plenty of damage on its own. Washington Sundar pulled up with a hamstring strain completing a run in the 33rd over of that same Cardiff match and missed the decider at Lord’s. In January he had been ruled out of the New Zealand T20Is with a side strain.
Harshit Rana’s year has been worse. A knee injury in a warm-up against South Africa cost him the T20 World Cup and the IPL season, and when he came back he picked up a Grade 1 right hamstring strain in the third T20I against England. Reports since have questioned why he returned from an extended rehab carrying extra weight.
Sai Sudharsan is the current live case. He is in the Test squad subject to clearance from the Centre of Excellence after a big toe injury, and has spent the past week batting in the nets in Bengaluru trying to earn it before the squad flies to Colombo.
Shubman Gill, now in his second year as Test captain after taking the job in May 2025, said the quiet part out loud after the Lord’s defeat. “It becomes a little difficult that you come to the ground on the morning and you come to know a player has a niggle,” he said, adding that the group, medical staff included, had to get better at this before the 2027 World Cup.
A backroom that has already turned over
What makes this land differently is how much of the support staff has changed already. Adrian Le Roux replaced Soham Desai as strength and conditioning coach in June 2025, ending Desai’s eight years in the role. Ryan ten Doeschate resigned as assistant coach after the England tour and joined KKR as head of cricket strategy. T Dilip’s contract as fielding coach was not renewed, with Subhadeep Ghosh appointed before this tour. Kaushik is interim. A dressing room that keeps losing players is also a dressing room that keeps changing the people who look after them.
There is a version of this where the review finds nothing structural. A knee, a hamstring and a sore toe have very little to do with each other, and stitching them into one narrative is the easy thing rather than the accurate thing.
None of it gets settled before Galle. India play a three-day warm-up in Colombo from 7 August, open the series on 15 August and finish at the SSC from 23 August, on their first Test tour of Sri Lanka since the 3-0 sweep of 2017. Gill takes a seam attack led by Mohammed Siraj into a series carrying World Test Championship points, with the board’s post-mortem already pencilled in. Win it and the review becomes a footnote. Lose it and the review becomes the story.