Ambati Rayudu fails YoYo Test; Virat Kohli clears
Ambati Rayudu's comeback to the ODI squad might be shortlived as he failed to clear the YoYo test while Indian captain Virat Kohli comfortably cleared the test ahead of the tour of England, which begins with two T20Is against Ireland.
Rayudu's failure to clear the fitness test looks set to result in his omission from the squad that will travel to England. All the players comfortably cleared the test and the middle-order batsman is the only member of the squad traveling to the UK to fail to attain the mark of 16.1 set by the BCCI according to a BCCI official, who told PTI.
Rayudu was Chennai Super Kings' leading run-getter in IPL 2018 and earned his place back in the Indian side after his contribution towards CSK's third IPL title. But in a surprising turn of events, the 32-year-old performed well below par, after his personal-best IPL season, where he scored 602 runs at an average of 43 and strike rate of almost 150.
The YoYo test has been set as the basic fitness parameter by the Indian team and several members of India's limited-overs squad that will travel to England were at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru for the YoYo test, which was conducted in the presence of Team India trainer Shankar Basu and a few other support staff.
Along with Kohli, MS Dhoni, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kedar Jadhav and Suresh Raina were among the first batch of players who took the test. All of them cleared it and Kohli didn't look in any discomfort as he matched the rest, even as he is recovering from the neck injury that ruled him out of his county stint with Surrey.
India's tour of England begins on July 3 with the first of three T20Is but before that, they will be in Ireland for two T20Is on June 27 and 29.