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As another edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) beckons, the Mumbai Indians team is awaiting updates on Suryakumar Yadav’s fitness. One of the key members of the franchise, Suryakumar underwent a sports hernia surgery recently and has been out of action since, leading to speculations over his availability for the season.
“We are awaiting updates on Suryakumar from the BCCI. We have always been under a cloud of fitness issues but we have a world-class medical team. We may lose one or two in terms of fitness but we have to move on as is sport,” Boucher said on Monday.
With the T20 World Cup lined up in June, the fitness levels of the players will be closely monitored, and Boucher, who earlier was the head coach of South Africa, said: “As the coach of Mumbai Indians, I am going to be a little biased and hoping to see my best players all games. I have a soft spot for my players and I do understand that they might have niggles and that’s when I will fall back on my medical team and work with them accordingly…”
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This time around, there has been a change of guard at Mumbai Indians with Hardik Pandya replacing Rohit Sharma as the captain, and Boucher believes that this will give Rohit enough freedom to bat freely.
“Rohit has been in a fantastic touch. The way he’s hitting the ball against England was fantastic. I am looking forward to seeing him go out and express himself. If he has a fantastic season, we will be there in the dying stages of the tournament,” Boucher said.
In the last edition of the tournament, injury woes hit Mumbai Indians hard, but this time around, the coach is confident. “Last year was a challenge with injuries for a lot of guys. This year is a fresh challenge with a new captain. I have been a cricketer that has played under a lot of captains. My job will be to support the captain as much as possible as we try to win the title,” he added.
‘No issues with my body’
Sharing the dais with Boucher, Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya, too, indicated that he intends to play all the games. “I have no issues with my body. I intend to play all matches and I haven’t missed a lot of IPL matches anyway,” he said with a smile.
Talking about his injury during the World Cup, the captain added: “My injury during the World Cup was a freak injury. I tried to push during that time to return for World Cup semis or finals, it aggravated the injury more. It was a freak injury. But, I have been fit since the Afghanistan assignment…”
He recently featured in the DY Patil T20 tournament in Navi Mumbai before joining the Mumbai Indians camp.
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