Spinner Varun Chakravarthy's chances of playing against England in the T20 series have taken a hit as he has not done well on the new fitness benchmark test for the Indian players. The new test requires players to complete a 2 km run in 8.5 minutes or scoring 17.1 in the Yo-Yo test.
The five T20Is against England are from March 12 to 20, all in Ahmedabad.
If the KKR spinner is unable to make the cut for the squad, this will be the second time since IPL 2020 that he has missed a potential debut due to fitness concerns. Last November, he was picked for the T20I series against Australia on the back of impressive performances for Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League (IPL), but instead had to be checked into the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bangalore.
Chakravarthy said that he is still awaiting formal communication from the board. "I have not been informed of anything as yet," he was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
The 29-year-old spinner is currently training with the Kolkata Knight Riders team in Mumbai after almost three months at the NCA, where he had to work on his inability to throw -- a problem that kept him out of the tour of Australia in November.
Cricbuzz reported that the rehab programme went well and while there has been significant improvement on strength and conditioning his running has become a problem.
Chakravarthy is not part of the Tamil Nadu side in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy by his state selectors.
"He was never in contention for a one-day team berth because we consider him as a T20 specialist. It will be difficult to expect more than four-five overs from him because of the effort he puts on his fingers," said Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) secretary S Ramasamy. Interestingly enough, he was not picked for the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament either.
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