In what comes as a huge blow to the Gujarat Titans, star pacer Mohammed Shami has been ruled out of the IPL 2024 due to a left ankle injury that requires immediate surgery. Shami is the leader of the Gujarat Titan’s pace bowling unit. His getting ruled out comes as a huge blow to the franchise, as they already lost the services of former captain Hardik Pandya, who joined the Mumbai Indians in a trade deal. Opener Shubman Gill has taken over the leadership duties of the Gujarat based team following Hardik’s departure.
The Titans have performed really well since their arrival in the Indian Premier League in 2022. They won the IPL 2022 in their debut season, and last year, they reached the final, where they lost against MS Dhoni’s CSK in a last-ball thriller. Since their arrival in the league, Shami has played a really important role in Gujarat’s success in the IPL. The speedster picked up 20 wickets in IPL 2022 and improved even more last year when he managed to get 28 scalps at an outstanding average of 18.64.
GT has not made any official announcement regarding the replacement for Shami, but they can pick a replacement from the list of players who went unsold during the 2024 IPL auction. The only condition is that the replacement’s base price cannot exceed the base price of Mohammed Shami (2 crore Indian rupees).
The 33-year old seamer, who is not a part of the Indian team’s squad for the ongoing test series against England, last played for the Men in Blue in the 2023 ODI World Cup final against Australia in November last year.
“He (Mohammed Shami) was in London in the last week of January in order to take special ankle injections, and he was informed after three weeks that he could start doing light running and carry forward from there on.
“But the injections have not yielded any kind of results, and the only option left for him is surgery. He will shortly leave for the UK to get the surgery done on his left ankle. He is for sure not going to play any part in the IPL 2024,” a senior BCCI figure told PTI.
This recent development has raised concerns regarding the NCA’s injury rehabilitation management programme. Bhuvneshwar Kumar also struggled with a lot of injuries in the past, and he visited the NCA for treatment, but whenever he took the field, he got injured continuously and kept on visiting the NCA again and again.
Shami is a doubt for the upcoming 2024 T20 World Cup, and his surgery will require quite a long time to heal properly. He won’t return before India’s home test match series against New Zealand and Bangladesh (October–November).
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