Ace Indian spinner Kuldeep Yadav has undergone successful surgery in India and is now looking towards the 'road to recovery'.
Earlier this week, the spinner left Kolkata Knight Riders' bio-secure bubble in UAE to nurse his knee injury.
"Surgery was a success and the road to recovery has just begun. Thank you so much to everyone for your amazing support. The focus is now to complete my rehab well and be back on the pitch doing what I love as soon as possible," Kuldeep Yadav tweeted.
Surgery was a success and the road to recovery has just begun. Thank you so much to everyone for your amazing support. The focus is now to complete my rehab well and be back on the pitch doing what I love as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/364k9WWDb3
— Kuldeep yadav (@imkuldeep18) September 29, 2021
The injury comes as a significant blow for the bowler. Kuldeep has slipped down the pecking order since the 2019 World Cup for the national team.
Even for KKR, Kuldeep only played five games during IPL 2020 and did not feature even once this year. The crafty left-arm wrist-spinner was retained by Kolkata Knight Riders for INR 5.8 crore in the 2019 edition of IPL.
After this surgery, Kuldeep is expected to go through a long rehabilitation process before attempting a comeback to competitive cricket.
It must be mentioned that Kuldeep has had a rough ride in the past two years, after a five-wicket haul in Sydney, when head coach Ravi Shastri had termed him as India''s No. 1 spinner in overseas conditions.
Things changed drastically since the 2019 IPL when Kuldeep had a slump in form and since then his career went southwards as the Indian team management lost faith in his abilities even on rank turners, where classical left-arm orthodox Shahbaz Nadeem was picked from the stand-by, but Kuldeep, who was in main squad, didn''t get a chance.
The 26-year-old from Kanpur has played 7 Tests, 65 ODIs, and 23 T20Is for a total of 174 wickets across formats.
He last played for India in Sri Lanka but it was more of a middling performance with best figures of 2/48 in an ODI game and 2/30 in a T20 International. He played two more games during that tour -- an ODI and a T20I -- in which he went wicket-less.
