India spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja are both under an injury cloud ahead of the Boxing Day test against Australia, leaving the tourists with a potential selection conundrum.
India coach Ravi Shastri said offspinner Ashwin was still recovering from an abdominal strain that caused him to miss the second test in Perth, while left-arm spinner Jadeja had been nursing a shoulder problem.
Shastri revealed that Jadeja’s injury had also ruled him out at Perth Stadium, where India went with a four-prong pace attack and duly slumped to a 146-run loss that levelled the four-test series 1-1.
“The problem with Jaddu (Jadeja) is that he had taken an injection four days into coming to Australia, because of some stiffness in the shoulder and it took a while for that injection to settle down,” Shastri told reporters at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday.
“So when you look at Perth, we felt that he was maybe 60-70 percent fit and that we didn’t want to risk that in Perth. If he was 80 percent fit here (MCG), he will play.”
Ashwin, meanwhile, needed to be evaluated over the next 48 hours, the coach said.
The injuries could open the door for left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav, who played the last of his five tests against West Indies at Hyderabad.
