What getting injured has taught Deepak Chahar

Indian swing bowler Deepak Chahar plans to be more selective about his playing schedule in the future after a stress fracture in the lower back became the price of relentlessly pushing himself.

Since his Twenty20 International debut in 2018 against England, Chahar has become a regular team pick in that format, impressing with his swing and death-overs mastery.

The 27-year-old had hoped to cement his place in the One-day squad before he was laid low by the injury, which will keep him out of action until April.

“The stress fracture in my back is mainly due to playing excess matches,” Chahar told the Telegraph newspaper, adding he had been playing intensively for the past two years."

“So I have to be a bit selective now. Else, I won’t be able to survive.”

Chahar, the top performing bowler in a single Twenty20 International innings, will miss the limited-overs home series against Sri Lanka, Australia and South Africa, as well as India’s tour of New Zealand, in coming months.

The bowler reckons trying to be match-fit ahead of this year’s Indian Premier League, which is expected to start in late March, is a reasonable target.

“My objective is to obviously keep performing better, but I will also be doing the required training and exercises to regain my lost pace. Since I was playing continuously, I had lost two-three kilometres of pace."

“As for the variations, I’ll look to better my yorkers, which I think, are already better now than how they used to be. Working on leg-cutters too,” Chahar said.