Indian cricket star Ishan Kishan will lead Jharkhand in the upcoming Buchi Babu tournament in Tamil Nadu. Ishan, aiming for a return to the Indian national team, has chosen to participate in this domestic tournament which begins on August 15.
Initially, the wicketkeeper-batsman was not included in Jharkhand’s squad for the first-class competition but was later added.
“For Ishan, it wasn’t about his skills,” a representative from the JSCA told ESPNcricinfo. “It was just a matter of if he was prepared to come back. The choice was his. When he wasn’t on the first list, it was simply because we hadn’t received any word from him. As soon as he showed his eagerness to come back, we added him to the team.”
Ishan made news last year when he came back early from the South Africa trip, saying he was tired from traveling. While he was not playing for his country, he did not join the Ranji Trophy but trained with all-rounder Hardik Pandya in Baroda.
This choice did not please the people who pick the national team, and as a result, Ishan did not get a yearly contract from the BCCI.
Ishan’s last international cricket game was in November 2023. Since then, the IPL is the only big tournament he has played in.
Without Rishabh Pant, he made his first appearance in a Test match last year against West Indies. But after deciding to take a break from cricket, KS Bharat and then Dhruv Jurel were chosen for the wicketkeeper position in red-ball cricket by India, moving Ishan further down the list of options.
Ishan finally spoke about his long absence from cricket, mentioning travel fatigue as the reason.
“I was scoring runs and then I found myself on the bench. This can happen in team sports. But I felt travel fatigue. It showed there was a problem, I wasn’t feeling good or right, so I decided to take a break. Unfortunately, except for my family and a few close people, no one understood that,” he said in an interview with The Indian express.
