Asia Cup: Shreyas Iyer is fully fit, has ticked all boxes, says Rahul Dravid

Bengaluru (Karnataka)[India]: India head coach Rahul Dravid on Tuesday said Shreyas Iyer is fully fit ahead of the Asia Cup 2023 and noted that the batter had ticked all the boxes in training.

Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, Dravid also confirmed that wicketkeeper-batter KL Rahul will not be available for India’s first two matches – against Pakistan and Nepal.

While Rahul will not play the first two matches of the Asia Cup 2023, Shreyas will be up for selection. Dravid said that Iyer is likely to get play time ahead of the World Cup at home.

“Shreyas Iyer is fully fit, he has ticked all the boxes – batted and fielded a lot in the camp. The only thing he has missed is the game time. Looked pretty good, and it will be all about giving him more game time, hopefully, it will come in the Asia Cup. In terms of fitness, he has done really well, has batted really well,” Dravid said.

Shreyas in April decided to go for surgery for his recurring lower-back injury. He was constantly troubled by a bulging disc in his lower back. Due to this, he had to abort playing the final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in March in Ahmedabad. He then underwent surgery in London in May.

Dravid said KL Rahul is progressing well from the niggle he picked after recovering from his injury and will be under the National Cricket Academy (NCA) supervision till September 4.

“He (KL Rahul) had a good week with us, he is progressing really well on the route that we want to take, but he will be unavailable for the first part of the Kandy leg of the trip. The NCA will be looking after him while we are travelling. We will reassess him on the fourth (September 4) and we will take it from there.

The signs are good and he is progressing really well,” Dravid said.

Dravid also spoke about speculation on No.4 and 5 spots in the team.

“Just to give you an example, the No.4 and 5 spots seem to get discussed and talked about a lot, and it gives the impression that we don’t have clarity on who was going to be there, but to be very honest with you, I could have told you 18 or 19 months ago who were the two or three candidates who we were looking at for No.4 and 5 slots,” Dravid said.

“It was always going to be between Shreyas, KL and Rishabh Pant for those spots right from 18 months ago.

Obviously, it’s unfortunate that all three of them in that position ended up with injuries in the space of two months. What are the odds of that happening? Nobody can calculate for that. And not small injuries, right? Serious injuries.

All three of them have had to go under the knife and have had operations,” Dravid said.

India will start their Asia Cup campaign on September 2 with a high-voltage clash against Pakistan in Kandy. Two days later, they will face Nepal in the final group-stage encounter.

India squad for Asia Cup 2023: Rohit Sharma (C), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Tilak Varma, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammad Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami and Prasidh Krishna.