Virat Kohli of India was not present in New York for his team’s first training session on Tuesday ahead of the 2024 T20 World Cup.
Most of the members of the Indian squad have arrived in New York except for Kohli, whose presence in the first warm-up game of India against Bangladesh on June 1 at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium seems doubtful as the BCCI has not provided any updates regarding his travel status.
Kohli just had an amazing India Premier League (IPL) season as he crossed the 8,000 runs line by scoring 741 runs in 15 games with one hundred and five fifties at an average of 61.75.
Despite his stellar performances, his franchise Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) could not qualify for the final as they lost the play-off game to Rajasthan Royals (RR).
However, it is confirmed that Kohli will play the first match of the tournament on June 5 against Ireland.
The rest of the Indian team has arrived in the USA in segments due to the IPL. The players of the franchises who were eliminated early on in the league arrived earlier than those players whose teams were participating in the play-offs.
However, Mumbai Indians captain, Hardik Pandya, whose team was out of the race for the playoffs arrived late due to a break he took.
A video posted by BCCI on their social media handles enabled the fans to delve deeper into the routine the players have been following after the IPL journey.
In the video, the team’s strength and conditioning coach Soham Desai gave an idea of the routine players follow.
The video shows players warming up by running and doing some routine strength and conditioning exercises including playing football.
"They have been away for two-and-a-half months from us [the national team setup]. Just getting them together to know where they stand, what needs to be done before the World Cup was the goal," Desai said of the Tuesday session.
"[The] goal is to spend 45 minutes to an hour there on the park to again get going. We want to see them move. We want to see them run so that we can put enough plans in place for each guy to be ready for the first game.”
After India locks horns with Ireland, they will face arch-rivals Pakistan on June 9 at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium. Their next group matches will be against USA on June 12 and Canada on June 15.
India squad:
Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
Reserves: Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, Khaleel Ahmed and Avesh Khan
- Virat Kohli
