Senior Indian bowlers’ recurring injuries, according to Ravi Shastri, are “unreal,” “ridiculous,” and “frustrating.”

Shastri’s remarks came while examining the furthest down the line injury to Deepak Chahar, who dumbfounded only one preceding pulling out of Chennai Super Lords’ IPL match against Mumbai Indians in the wake of getting a left hamstring injury.

“Let’s put it this way: there are quite a few in the last three or four years who are permanent residents of the NCA. Soon, they’ll get a resident permit there to walk in any time they want, which is not a good thing at all. It’s unreal.” 

Shastri said on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 Time: Out show ahead of Super Kings’s home match against Rajasthan Royals on Wednesday.

Chahar had hamstring issues for the second time in the last five months, requiring him to leave a game before completing his four overs. Chahar left the second one-day international against Bangladesh in Mirpur in December after bowling three overs. After sustaining a Grade 3 quadricep tear in February, he then returned to the BCCI’s National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru, where he would spend the majority of 2022.

A solid back, which was analyzed as a pressure crack, then deferred his rebound, baffling both Chahar and the Indian team Management, prompting Rohit Sharma saying that the group “can’t afford guys coming in here half-fit and representing the country”.

Chahar isn’t the only Indian athlete who has missed significant time due to recurring injuries: Yash Dayal, Navdeep Saini, Jasprit Bumrah, Kuldip Sen, and Mohsin Khan have all been out of action recently for varying lengths of time. In fact, Bumrah tried to come back from his back injury multiple times before having surgery recently.

Ravi Shastri stated that the fact that the majority of these players were declared fit by the NCA medical team but were still suffering from injuries was the thing that bothered him the most

“Come on, you’re not playing that much cricket to be injured again and again. I mean, you can’t play four matches on the trot. What are you going to the NCA for? If you are going to come back and then three matches [later] you’re back there. So make sure you get fit and come once and for all because it’s damn frustrating. Not just for the team, the players, the BCCI, the captains of the various [IPL] franchises. It’s annoying, to say the least. I can understand a serious injury, but every four games when someone touches his hamstring or someone touches his groin, you start thinking what are these guys… what are they training, what’s going on. And some of them don’t play any other cricket in the year. It’s just four overs [in the IPL], man, three hours. The game is over.”

Shastri said.

In a statement to the media a day after the Mumbai Indians match, Super Kings stated that Chahar would undergo additional scans before his participation in the remainder of the IPL would be decided.

Chahar himself had recently stated that recovering from a significant injury was never simple. He had told PTI in February that he was “fully fit” and ready for the IPL.

“I had two big injures. One was a stress fracture and one was a quad grade 3 tear. They are both very big injuries. You are out for months. Anyone who comes back after the injury, it takes time, especially for the fast bowlers.”

he had said