BANGLORE, India
Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood is likely to be ruled out of the first half of the Test series after having not recovered from an Achilles injury on his left leg, which he picked up after bowling in the Sydney Test last month.
“Not sure about the first Test. It’s still a few days away but it’s sneaking up pretty quickly. Second one is obviously straight after as well.
So, we’ll play it by ear over the next week and next few days and hopefully Tuesday goes well,” Hazlewood said before Australia’s final session at the KSCA Stadium in the outskirts of Bangalore on Sunday.
“Just a bit of workload management at the moment. Just managing the Achilles. I was bowling a fair bit leading into the tour at home and sort of just pushing up against it.
Probably wasn’t recovering as well as I would have liked between each session so thought we’d give it a few days here straight of the bat and try and get over the hump and have a bowl from Tuesday on (in Nagpur) and hope it goes well,” he added when asked about his lack of participation in the Alur sessions.
“It’s still lingering from the (Sydney) Test match probably. We obviously bowled after a lot of rain and the jump-offs were quite soft, where we were taking off from and they ended up replacing them as well. It sort of worked to a degree. But just that extra load jumping off a soft ground to bowl and again first Test match. Your body is not used to that sort of workload as well.”
“It’s been frustrating playing one Test at a time. It always feels the hardest Test to play, the first one and they sort of get easier as they go and you get to the other side, the end of the series, it gets hard again. Hopefully I can string a couple together on this tour,” he said.
