Iyer’s India comeback plan suffers setback, set to miss Mumbai’s next Ranji game

Shreyas Iyer, who aims to make a comeback to the Indian Test set-up, suffered a major setback on Tuesday as he was ruled out of Mumbai’s next game in the ongoing 2024/25 Ranji Trophy season. The development comes days after Iyer scored a century in Mumbai’s nine-wicket win against Maharashtra.
According to a report in Cricbuzz, Iyer’s shoulder injury is the reason he will miss Mumbai’s third game, which will be played against Tripura starting October 26 at the Maharaja Bir Bikram College Stadium in Agartala. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) sources informed the website that he will need to rest for at least one week.
Iyer played seven straight multi-day matches, an indication that the India star is once again fit to play the longer format after his prolonged battle with a back injury, but did mention that he would want to be smart about giving enough rest to his body irrespective of criticism. “No matter whatever people think outside, I have to listen to my body because I know the amount of threshold I’ve carried over the last few years and based on that I’ll be taking the right decision and I hope that my team will also back (me),” he was quoted after his knock of 142 off 190 last week.
Sources in the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) also confirmed, as mentioned in the report, that Iyer won’t be travelling with the team to Agartala for the match against Tripura. The team, however, will leave on Wednesday morning, although MCA did not name a replacement for Iyer, having announced the squad on Monday.
Earlier this year, midway through the home Test series against England, Iyer was dropped from the squad after a string of low scores since his knock of 87 in Mirpur against Bangladesh. In the 13 innings since that score, Iyer did not manage to reach the 50-run mark even once.
The 29-year-old was later removed from BCCI’s central contract after he seemingly disobeyed their mandate over participating in domestic cricket when away from national team duty, although many reports claimed that he was nursing a back injury at Kolkata Knight Riders’ camp in Mumbai. He later returned to the Mumbai squad to play in the semis and the final.
In the ongoing domestic season, Iyer has failed to do enough to make the selectors recall him for any of the home series, having managed 389 runs in 11 innings at 35.36 with three fifties and a ton.