An ankle injury has kept Mohammed Shami out of professional cricket since his exceptional outing at the 2023 World Cup. Though he had returned to the nets, there had been no confirmed update on a day of return, though Bengal included him in their 31-member list of probables for the Ranji Trophy.

Around end-September and early October, there emerged reports of his recovery being set back by subsequent injuries. Some reports also claimed that he might not be available for the five-match Test tour of Australia, to begin roughly after a year after the World Cup final, Shami’s last outing.

On October 2, Shami put out a tweet to respond to these tweets. While not countering the claims around his injury, he reminded everyone that “neither the BCCI nor me have mentioned that I am out of the Border Gavaskar series”.

Why these type of baseless rumors? I'm working hard and trying my level best to recover. Neither the BCCI nor me have mentioned that I am out of the Border Gavaskar series. I request the public to stop paying attention to such news from unofficial sources. Please stop and don’t… pic.twitter.com/0OgL1K2iKS

— 𝕸𝖔𝖍𝖆𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖉 𝖘𝖍𝖆𝖒𝖎 (@MdShami11) October 2, 2024

Rohit Sharma: Right now, it's difficult to make a call on him

In the press conference ahead of the first Test match against New Zealand, India’s last Test assignment before the Australia tour, the media asked home captain Rohit Sharma about updates on Shami. “Right now, it's pretty difficult to make a call on him,” responded Rohit, “whether he’ll be fit for this series or the Australia series.

“He recently had a setback. He had a swelling in his knee – which was quite unusual – while he was in the process of getting fit, getting close to 100 per cent. That put him back a little bit in his recovery, so he had to start again, afresh. Right now, he is at the NCA. He is working with the physios, the doctors, at the NCA. We are keeping our fingers crossed. We want him to be fit. We want him to be 100% fit more than anything else.”

Rohit made it clear that the team management did want Shami – but only as long as he was fit: “We don't want to bring an undercooked Shami to Australia. That is not going to be the right decision for us.

“Since you mentioned, he has not played cricket for a year, and it is quite tough for a fast bowler – having missed so much of cricket and then suddenly to come out and be at his best. It is not ideal. We will want him to give him enough time to recover and be 100 per cent fit. The physios, the doctors, the trainers have set a roadmap for him. He is supposed to play a couple of games before he plays international cricket.

“We’ll see where he is at after this New Zealand series and then take a call at what stage of Australia he’ll be fit for us.”

The first Test between the sides will be played at Perth, from November 22, a little more than 11 years since Rohit and Shami’s Test debuts.

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