Rahul Dravid has confirmed that Shreyas Iyer will play the second Test against Australia in Delhi, beginning on Friday, should his fitness assessment prove he is capable of handling the workload.
The Team India head coach also stressed that the performance of a player before being sidelined due to an injury is valued a lot by the team management when they look at the team composition.
“I’m glad that he’s (Shreyas) back and he’s fit. We’ll take a call after a couple of days of training. He’s had a long session today (Wednesday), he’s done some training. We’ll assess it tomorrow as well once he comes in for a light hit, and see how he feels in the evening.
“But certainly if he’s fit and ready to go, and ready to take the load of a fiveday Test match, then, without doubt, his performance means he’ll walk straight into the side,” said Dravid at a media conference at the Kotla on Wednesday.
Shreyas has been out of action since the ODI series against Sri Lanka last month, with a back injury forcing him to miss the New Zealand series as well as the first Test in Nagpur.
“Without it being written in stone, certainly we value the contributions of people who’ve been there and if they’ve missed out due to injury then they really deserve the right to be able to come back in.
“If they have performed, irrespective of what has happened in the time they have been injured...it’s something that I can’t answer for everyone but that’s certainly the outlook of the team management,” Dravid remarked.
“So it’ll be nice to have him back and he’s certainly been one of our better players, so he deserves it. And I think people in the team understand that as well, they know that if they are replacing someone injured and if that person comes back, then the same thing will be followed for them as well.”