Ravi Shastri to miss fifth Test against England

Team India’s head coach Ravi Shastri will not travel with the team for the fifth and final Test against England as he will be undergoing his mandatory isolation of 14 days.

Ahead of the fourth day’s play of the ongoing Test match, the BCCI announced that Shastri tested positive for COVID-19. Even bowling coach Bharat Arun, fielding coach R. Shridhar and physiotherapist Nitin Patel were told to isolate themselves.

“Unfortunately, Shastri will remain in isolation for 14 days and will have to return two negative tests before he can come out of isolation. He will not be a part of the Indian dressing room till then,” a source was quoted as saying by Yahoo Sports.

India’s batting coach Vikram Rathour stated that players were distracted by the positive result of the coach but eventually decided to focus on the match.

“Of course, we are missing Ravi bhai massively. Ravi bhai, Bharat Arun, and R Sridhar have been an extremely important part of this setup, they have done well in the past five-six years and they have played a major role in the team doing well. This is what it is, they are not here. In the morning, it was a bit of a distraction, we had a word and we decided we need to focus on the cricket. We are here for this series, and I think the boys did well to not get distracted. There was a potential we could have been distracted, the credit needs to go to the boys for the way they handled themselves,” said Rathour during a virtual press conference on Sunday.