Overview
- Multiple first‑team and white‑ball players are unavailable or in rehab ahead of the Sri Lanka Tests starting August 15, with Jasprit Bumrah and Sai Sudharsan already ruled out and others like Harshit Rana and Washington Sundar managed at the CoE.
- CoE staff and former NCA physiotherapists say the problem is driven by accumulated workload and franchise pressure from the IPL, which they say pushes players to compete through niggles and arrive at the CoE in worsened condition.
- BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia visited the Bengaluru Centre of Excellence on August 9 to review rehabilitation programmes and met CoE head VVS Laxman, who defended the centre’s role beyond rehab and acknowledged repeated hiring failures for the sports‑science lead.
- The Head of Sports Science and Medicine role has been vacant since Nitin Patel resigned in March 2025 and several shortlisted international candidates withdrew late, leaving the CoE without permanent senior medical leadership.
- Experts and former players have urged the BCCI to centralise monitoring of workloads and standardise physio protocols across international, domestic and IPL settings because continued fragmentation risks team performance in the World Test Championship and the 2027 World Cup cycle.