Four Indian players – Shreyas Iyer, Shikhar Dhawan, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Navdeep Saini – have tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival at the team camp in Ahmedabad prior to the series against West Indies. The players are now in quarantine, and opening batter Mayank Agarwal has now been called up to the team.
India have been dealt a severe blow only a few days before their series against West Indies is deemed to kick off. Upon arrival to the team camp in Ahmedabad, four players and three members of the support staff – fielding coach T Dilip, security liaison officer B Lokesh and sports massage therapist Rajeev Kumar – tested positive for COVID-19.
The BCCI announced the development via a media release on Wednesday night. Secretary Jay Shah also mentioned that opening batter Agarwal had been called up to the ODI team as a replacement. Upon landing in Ahmedabad on January 31, all players were made to undergo three RT-PCR tests.
That is when the positive cases were detected as Dhawan and Saini returned positive tests after the first round. Non-playing staff members and Dilip and Lokesh also tested positive on that day. Gaikwad had cleared the first round of testing but later tested positive the next day, while Iyer and Rajeev returned positive tests on the last round of testing.
Players of the Indian team had started to arrive in Ahmedabad at the end of the previous week. The bpard had asked all the members of the Indian contingent to take a PCR test with them before travelling to Ahmedabad.
The members who have tested positive will now have to spend time in quarantine in Ahmedabad. According to the latest guidelines issued by the government, they will have to isolate for a minimum period of seven days.
Both the Indian and West Indies teams are housed in the same hotel but on different floors. All the other players are required to serve a minimum of three days’ quarantine in their hotel rooms before they are allowed to resume training. India are scheduled to start training from Thursday while West Indies from February 4.
The ODI series will be played behind closed doors in Ahmedabad given a third wave of coronavirus in the country. Dhawan, Iyer and Gaikwad are unlikely to take part in the ODI series to be held between February 6 and 11.
As a result, Agarwal has been added to the ODI squad. The trio of infected players will be hoping to return for the T20I series which will be played in Kolkata between February 16 and 20.
