Newly promoted vice captain Rohit Sharma faces injury scare for Test series in South Africa: Report

India’s newly appointed Test vice captain Rohit Sharma faces an injury scare suffered during training and Gujarat’s Priyank Panchal has been called in as cover ahead of South Africa tour, reported PTI.

Panchal has been in South Africa as part of the India A squad and led the side initially.

According to a report on Cricbuzz, the injury is serious enough to rule Rohit out of the upcoming South Africa tour.

Rohit was named as Virat Kohli’s deputy for red-ball cricket as well as being promoted to captaincy in ODI and T20I cricket going forward. Kohli will helm the three-Test series in South Africa starting December 26 – a tour delayed and shortened because of fears over the spread of the new Omicron coronavirus variant.

“As of now, the extent of Rohit’s injury is not very clear after he sustained a hit while taking throw-downs from team’s specialist Raghavendra”, according to the PTI news report.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India named Ajinkya Rahane in the squad despite the veteran batsman’s recent dry spell with the bat. Rahane had missed the second Test against New Zealand in Mumbai due to a reported hamstring niggle.

Ravindra Jadeja, Shubman Gill, Axar Patel and Rahul Chahar were already unavailable due…

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