DHARAMSHALA — By Tuesday evening, Hardik Pandya was as close to a clearance as he had been in months. Sources at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru told reporters he had bowled the full quota of ten overs in match simulations, batted, fielded, and come through every parameter his fitness assessors required. The paperwork, in effect, was done.
Twenty-four hours later, the 32-year-old all-rounder was ruled out of the three-match ODI series against Afghanistan, a victim of a fresh quadriceps strain. PTI reported that sources believe the new injury may have resulted from bowling that very ten-over quota at the CoE. The test designed to confirm he was ready may have been the thing that ended his series.
India begin the Afghanistan ODIs on Saturday in Dharamshala, followed by matches in Lucknow on June 17 and Chennai on June 20. Pandya will be in Bengaluru for the duration. “With three weeks for recovery, there is absolutely no chance of him playing the ODI series as his rehabilitation will not be complete,” a BCCI source told PTI.
The timing is consequential beyond this series. Selection committee chairman Ajit Agarkar had explained Pandya’s exclusion from India’s T20 side specifically by citing the need to protect his ODI availability for the buildup to the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. “He is a part of the one-day squad right now in (the) Afghanistan (series),” Agarkar told reporters last week. “Like (Jasprit) Bumrah, if we can get him playing well and keep him fit for one-day cricket — I don’t think he’s played one-day cricket for a while — that is the main objective.”
Pandya’s last ODI appearance was in the Champions Trophy final in Dubai in March. He has 94 caps in the format but has been unable to string together anything approaching consistent availability across the past three years. The ankle that fractured India’s World Cup campaign against Bangladesh in Pune in October 2023 gave way first. Back spasms that cost him four games for Mumbai Indians in IPL 2026 brought him to the CoE this month. Now a quadriceps strain, picked up during the assessment for the first injury, extends the wait further.
As Eastern Herald reported last week, Pandya arrived at the CoE on June 2 and had been progressing well through batting, bowling, and fielding drills. As recently as Monday, a source quoted by IANS described his clearance as “almost a formality.” The quadriceps issue surfaced in the final days of that assessment, after the ten-over bowling simulation had been completed. Whether that simulation was too much, too soon, is a question the BCCI has not yet publicly addressed.
The absence leaves India’s ODI XI with a structural problem that Nitish Kumar Reddy, who has played four ODIs and is already in the squad, will be asked to partly solve. Reddy is a genuine seam-bowling option but operates differently to Pandya — a lower-order hitter with developing pace, not the sixth batting option and new-ball threat in one body that Pandya provides. Shivam Dube, who has also been discussed as a possible replacement addition, offers more firepower with the bat but bowls at lower pace and has only four ODI appearances of his own.
The broader question, one that the BCCI’s management will face again when the England series arrives in July, is what a realistic load for Pandya actually looks like. The CoE’s assessment protocol required him to bowl ten overs to be cleared. In a competitive ODI, he may bowl six or seven. The gap between what is required to pass a fitness test and what the body can actually sustain in a series is where Pandya keeps getting lost.
Agarkar acknowledged last week that India’s goal was simple: get Pandya playing ODIs and keep him playing them. “We can always bring him back,” he said of T20 cricket. The unspoken logic was that the format sacrificed to protect him had already delivered two World Cup victories with him in it, and the format he now needs to prove himself in — 50-overs cricket against pace-friendly South African pitches — demands a different physical durability.
Virat Kohli, who was also ruled out of the Afghanistan series with a hamstring injury sustained in the IPL 2026 final, at least has a clear timeline, with Agarkar saying the selectors expected him to be fit for the England ODI series in mid-July. As Eastern Herald reported when Kohli’s absence was confirmed, Yashasvi Jaiswal was drafted as his replacement. Rohit Sharma was cleared by the CoE and is expected to feature, making Pandya the lone significant casualty from the series India were supposed to use to begin building their 2027 combination.
Whether the England series — three ODIs from July 14 to 19 — remains achievable depends on how the quadriceps responds in the next three weeks. A BCCI source’s assessment that there is “absolutely no chance” of him making the Afghanistan series carries the implicit suggestion that three weeks of recovery could coincide with the England window. Whether a player who picked up his latest injury while trying to demonstrate his readiness can sustain a full ten-over spell on July 14 is a question the CoE will have to answer again.
The Afghanistan Test in Mullanpur, which India won by an innings and 300 runs inside three days, as Eastern Herald covered from New Chandigarh, offered no indication of what awaits in the white-ball contest. Afghanistan’s ODI side, stiffened by spin and fielded by a younger group than their Test lineup, will benefit from India’s unsettled combinations. The Dharamshala pitch at the HPCA Stadium tends to assist pace in early conditions. That Pandya will not bowl on it this Saturday is a fact his side will feel.
What is still unknown: whether the BCCI will name a formal replacement for Pandya before Saturday, and whether the selectors consider the England series a firm target or another aspirational deadline that will be assessed when it arrives. The all-rounder has spent the better part of three years being described as integral to India’s World Cup plans while also being unavailable for the matches that would prove it.
