The injured Washington Sundar indeed stepped on to the pitch in the 1st ODI between India and New Zealand on Sunday, which led to many people doubting the management’s way of dealing with the problem, which was headed by Gautam Gambhir. The first match of the series saw Sundar remaining not out on 7 balls faced and KL Rahul taking the tricky run chase of 301 in Vadodara. However, the spin-bowling all-rounder was soon after the game declared unfit for the whole series and replaced by Ayush Badoni. Noticing that Sundar was still being put on risk despite being injured, former Indian cricketer Mohammad Kaif was scathing towards the management and called it double standards, as he pointed to the recent case of Shubman Gill.
Kaif for sure did not forget to remind Gautam Gambhir and the Indian team’s management of Shubman’s case that he was ‘protected’ while getting injured during the South Africa Test series. Different, though, was the surprising approach in Sundar’s case.
“You will remember that when Shubman Gill was injured, he did not come out to bat in that Test match, the Kolkata Test. It was a game with a lot of runs scored and people thought that even 20 or 30 runs from him could help India win, but he still did not bat. That was done to give full protection to the player so that the injury would not get worse. But the same approach was not taken with Sundar. That is why I think it was a wrong decision. KL Rahul’s running was affected because of the injury. Despite India’s winning the match, I think there was a greater risk of aggravating the injury in yesterday’s game,” Kaif stated on his YouTube channel.