Asia Cup 2023: In what came as a major boost to India’s batting lineup, BCCI announced Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul are back in the team after successfully recovering from their respective injuries. The Men in Blue struggled to find a mirror replacement for Iyer who cemented his spot in the ODI format with consistent impressive performances in the last couple of years.
Iyer suffered from a very bad back injury which forced him to get surgery and made him miss a good amount of cricket from his career including the IPL 2023 season for the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Recently, Shreyas opened up about his feelings about the road to recovery and how he feels about being back in the team after so long. (Asia Cup 2023: ‘Imagine Running Out Virat Kohli…,’ R Ashwin’s Take On Shadab Khan Getting ‘Mankad’)
“Feeling ecstatic to be honest, to join the team and see happy faces all around. The compassion shown by all the players was fantastic and I am thrilled to be back,” said Iyer in an interview posted by BCCI on X, formally known as Twitter.
Watch the video here:
A journey of excruciating pain, patience and recovery @ShreyasIyer15 highlights the contributions of trainer Rajini and Nitin Patel at the NCA in his inspirational comeback from injury – By @RajalArora #TeamIndia | @VVSLaxman281
Full interview
— BCCI (@BCCI) August 27, 2023
“To be precise I had this nerve compression, basically a slip disc, which was compressing the nerve and the pain was going all the way down to the bottom of my tiny toe and it was horrendous, to be honest, at that point of time. And I was in excruciating pain and I wasn’t able to express myself properly about what I’m going through. But yeah, this was the feeling which I was having at that point of time and it was hard to communicate to everyone.”
“I am truly happy to be back where I am right now because I never imagined that I would recover so fast,” said Iyer. (Ahead Of Asia Cup 2023, Pakistan Become No 1 ODI Team But Where Are India Ranked?)
Iyer has 10 Tests, 42 ODIs and 49 T20Is so far for Team India with hopefully many more to come.
Squad: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, KL Rahul, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya (VC), Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Shami, Mohd. Siraj, Prasidh Krishna. Reserve: Sanju Samson.
