New Delhi: Wriddhiman Saha will undergo surgery on his shoulder in Manchester end July or beginning of August, the BCCI said Saturday, posting a timeline on its statement which, instead of serving the intended purpose, ended up raising more questions about how the NCA had allegedly ‘bungled his rehabilitation’.
“Wriddhiman Saha has sustained a posterosuperior labral tear. He will undergo surgery on his shoulder in Manchester at the end of July or the first week of August,” the board said in a statement.
“The labral repair surgery will be done by Dr Lennard Funk in Manchester, UK. The entire course of treatment and consultation that was carried out at the NCA was performed in co-ordination with the India team management and the GM of Cricket Operations (Saba Karim),” it added.
The BCCI timeline raises questions about how the entire issue was handled by the Cricket Operations team led by Karim.
“Saha reported at the NCA, January 29 with left proximal hamstring tendinopathy (pain in the upper left hamstring). Simultaneously he complained of right shoulder pain. Subsequently an MRI scan was done in February which revealed a labral tear,” the BCCI timeline said.
It means the first shoulder injury was sustained in January, which the BCCI ultimately revealed in July. The timeline states that after taking injections and rehab of close to six weeks (standard time taken for healing of labral tear), Saha was declared fit, March 19, just two-and-half-weeks before the IPL started.
As per the release, Saha once again sustained shoulder injury May 7 and was again given ultrasound injections in Delhi. He was rested for five IPL games.
“During this period, 15th of May, Saha requested to visit the NCA head physiotherapist, Ashish Kaushik, so that he could also review his right shoulder. Ashish assessed his right shoulder and concluded that its presentation was similar to how it had been in late January/early February,” the timeline said.
“Ashish informed the Sunrisers Hyderabad Physiotherapist of this who then continued with his course of rehabilitation. The Team India physiotherapist was informed of this sequence of events,” it added.
The next question left unanswered is if Kaushik assessed that Saha’s condition was ‘similar to what it was in January and February’ (when he first time sustained labral tear), how come Sunrisers Hyderabad or the BCCI allowed him to play the IPL game, May 25. If the first damage took six weeks to heal, how could a similar injury improve in 10 days?
A senior BCCI official, when asked to comment, said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
- BCCI’s failure to mention Saha’s nature of injury while announcing the team for the first three Tests against England
- Chief selector MSK Prasad, had gone on record stating that Saha is yet to recover from his thumb injury. It means lack of communication between him and Cricket Operations team