A back injury has forced India batsman Shreyas Iyer out of the one-day international (ODI) series against New Zealand, the country’s cricket board said yesterday.
Rajat Patidar will replace Iyer in the squad from today’s opener in Hyderabad, under the leadership of Rohit Sharma.
Iyer “will be heading to the National Cricket Academy (NCA) for further assessment and management”, the Board of Control for Cricket in India said in a statement.
It is learned that Iyer reported a stiff back immediately after the final ODI of the series against Sri Lanka on Sunday.
Keeping in mind he is part of the Test squad for the series against Australia in February, BCCI’s medical staff quickly decided to ask him to head to the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru as a precautionary measure.
As it stands Iyer, who reached NCA on Monday, is scheduled to rejoin the India squad in Nagpur for a preparatory camp ahead of the first Test against Australia on February 9.
Iyer made scores of 28, 28 and 38 batting at No 4 in India’s 3-0 victory in the ODI series against Sri Lanka.
He is India’s second highest run-scorer in ODIs since 2022, after Shubman Gill, scoring 818 at an average of 51.12 and strike rate of 92.95.
His replacement in the ODI squad, Patidar, is yet to make his international debut. Patidar, 29, was part of the squad for the ODI series in Bangladesh last December but did not get a game.
He has 1648 runs in 51 List A games at an average of 34.33 and strike rate of 97.45.
Iyer’s absence could give Suryakumar Yadav the chance of a consistent run in the ODI side. Suryakumar played only the third ODI against Sri Lanka, scoring 4 off 4 balls at No 6.
India’s first ODI against New Zealand is on January 18 in Hyderabad, followed by games in Raipur (January 21) and Indore (January 24).
The Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad - the venue of the first match - is known to favour teams that chase because of both dew and a fast outfield. There wasn’t much dew yesterday evening, though, as India’s players went through their drills on the main ground and had a net session at an adjacent facility around 6pm.
Still, the dew remained a talking point, even among the visitors with New Zealand captain Tom Latham saying that it was a problem not just in India but all over the world.
“I haven’t given a huge amount of thought to the change of match timings, but I think you see around the world at night time in different conditions where the ball does dew up or the ground does dew up,” Latham said yesterday during a press conference.
“And sometimes it can get hard to hold onto the ball and it does get a little bit slippery, but that’s something we’re presented with in international cricket.
“You’ve got to be able to be flexible to bowl with the wet ball or field in those conditions,” Latham said.
“You got to ride with whatever conditions you’re faced with and that’s adapting to the conditions as best as possible,” he added.

India’s updated ODI squad: Rohit Sharma (capt), Shubman Gill, Ishan Kishan (wk), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, K S Bharat (wk), Hardik Pandya, Rajat Patidar, Washington Sundar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Shardul Thakur, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohamed Shami, Mohamed Siraj, Umran Malik.