Rohit Sharma clarifies the reason behind Jasprit Bumrah’s absence for the ODIs against Sri Lanka

Rohit Sharma had a busy pre-match press conference on the eve of India’s opening ODI against Sri Lanka as the Indian skipper had to address several questions that spanned from him missing the T20I series to Jasprit Bumrah’s absence despite being announced as a member of the squad.

The most important highlight of that presser was why Rohit Sharma was not seen in the T20I series against Sri Lanka. The Indian captain said, “At the moment I think it was made clear in the past that it's a 50-over World Cup year for us. And for some of the guys, it's not possible to play all formats. If you look at the schedule, there were back-to-back matches, so we decided on just looking at some players' workloads that we wanted to make sure that they get enough break time and manage them. I definitely fall in that (category) as well.”

He also opened up on the actual reason that forced Jasprit Bumrah out of the series despite being announced as a part of the Indian squad, adding, “It is a very unfortunate incident with him. Poor guy has been working hard at the NCA all this time. Just when he got back to full fitness - he had started bowling and everything - it happened in the last two days. He felt a little bit of stiffness in his back. It is nothing major, just a stiffness and when Bumrah says anything, we have to be very cautious about it. That is what we did. I thought it was important for us to make the decision then to just pull him out.”

He further said, “When we named him, he was in the process of getting his workloads up. He was bowling in the nets. Just felt a little bit of stiffness in the back so we pulled him out. We need to be very careful with him. He had a major injury before the World Cup so we just need to be careful.”

Rohit had a great outing in the series opener as he hammered an impeccable 83 from just 67 balls, smashing 9 fours and 3 sixes, allowing India to get off to a blinder at Guwahati.