Irfan Pathan replaces injured Vinay Kumar for Sri Lanka Series

All rounder Irfan Pathan has replaced injured Vinay Kumar in India’s squad for the forthcoming limited overs series of Sri Lanka starting on July 21, BCCI announced on Friday. Pathan was ignored for the five One-Day Internationals and a T20 International in Sri Lanka when the side was selected past week. He has so far bagged 165 wickets in 115 one-day internationals.

“Vinay Kumar suffered a right hamstring injury while training on Thursday. He will hence not be available for the forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka,” the Board of Control for Cricket in India ( BCCI) said in a statement. The BCCI statement added that “Vinay Kumar is expected to regain match-fitness in three weeks”.

Irfan made a comeback to the Indian Squad after nearly three years when he was included during West Indies’ tour of India in December 2011.

“Obviously, when I was ignored firstly, I was thinking about what are the areas I wanted to work upon and was concentrating on my training at the National Cricket Academy. I played 8 ODIs after my comeback and have got 13 wickets. I have scored around 100 runs in the five innings that I have batted. For somebody like me, the additional I play international games, the well I will get,” Irfan said.

India will play five-match ODI series between July 21 and August 4 followed by a one-off  T20 game on August 7.

Team: MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Virender Sehwag, Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha, Zaheer Khan, Umesh Yadav, Ashok Dinda, Irfan Pathan, Ajinkya Rahane, Manoj Tiwari, Rahul Sharma.