T20 World Cup: Injury-prone Varun Chakravarthy out with left-calf muscle injury against Afghanistan

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Abu Dhabi, Nov 3: Injury-prone mystery spinner Varun Chakaravarthy's fitness issues cropped up once again as he was ruled out of India's Group 2 Super 12 game against Afghanistan in the T20 World Cup here on Wednesday (November 3).

"Varun Chakravarthy has a left calf issue. He was not available for selection for this game," a BCCI media statement said.

Chakravarthy failed to get a single wicket in the two games that he played and had the injury not cropped up, he was supposed to be benched as neither Pakistan nor New Zealand did have any problem in facing him. The right-arm spinner from Tamil Nadu was preferred over the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Rahul Chahar in the first two games.

Ravichandran Ashwin, who last played an international game in June in the World Test Championship, finally got a game after nearly four and half months. In fact, Ashwin is playing a white-ball game after four years, having last donned the blue jersey in the West Indies back in 2017.

Middle-order batsman Suryakumar Yadav, having recovered from the back spasm and replaced wicketkeeper-batsman Ishan Kishan from the playing eleven.

Meanwhile, India captain Virat Kohli lost his third consecutive toss as Nabi elected to field first in a crunch game for the underfire Indians. Team India have lost two games on the bounce in the ongoing multi-nation tournament.

After losing the toss Kohli said, "Firstly there's no denying the fact that the situation is a tricky one. Having said that there's still a chance. We as a team will look at the chance and try to play positive cricket. We know we haven't played up to potential whatever the reasons might be - need to brush that aside. Would have bowled first. But it's not a bad thing against a side like Afghanistan who look to put up runs on the board. A couple of changes - Surya is back as he's fit. Ashwin replaces Varun who has a bit of a niggle."

Playing XIs:

India: KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli (c), Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah.

Afghanistan: Hazratullah Zazai, Mohammad Shahzad (w), Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi (c), Gulbadin Naib, Sharafuddin Ashraf, Rashid Khan, Karim Janat, Naveen-ul-Haq, Hamid Hassan.