Ishant Sharma’s Surgery Postponement, A Bitter-Sweet Instance

Indian pace bowler Ishant Sharma, who had to be excluded from the ODIs in England after suffering from an ankle injury, has said that his troublesome ankle may need a surgery but he will get it done only after the tour of Australia.

Ishant, who played in all the four Test matches against England, but was replaced by Varun Aaron in the ODI squad, said that he did not want to miss the tour of Australia, despite the unavoidable surgery. The lanky pace bowler from Delhi, reasoned, “I have a ligament tear in my left foot, and there is also a bone impingement in my left ankle. Surgery is the only way out. But if I undergo that now, my foot will be in plaster for about three months and the rehabilitation in all could take about 6-8 months.”

Noble thoughts one must say. Because if I get my maths correct, if Ishant were to go for surgery immediately after the Tests against Australia, he will need up to June next year, at the very earliest, to get back to playing competitive cricket. Does that imply that Ishant Sharma wants to tour Australia at the expense of featuring in the IPL? On face value, that seems to be a first in Indian cricket and one can only hope that there will be more such instances to follow.

If Ishant were to really go ahead and give the IPL a miss, he would have taught his Delhi teammates, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir a lesson or two in Indian cricket university’s newest credit; A trade-off between injury-management and earning the big bucks (read, IPL).

Of course, the big question, however, is that if he does not undergo surgery immediately, wouldn’t Ishant be risking the team’s chances in much the same manner as Zaheer Khan had in England – walking in unfit in the first Test and having to pull out of the side for the rest of the tour?

Something for the selectors and management to think about before they announce the India team for the tour of Australia.