BCCI Centre of Excellence treated 32 top cricketers in 2025-26 as injury crisis deepens

New Delhi: The Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) injury-management programme at its Centre of Excellence (CoE) has come under renewed scrutiny, and a TOI-exclusive look at the CoE's annual report lays bare the scale of the problem. As many as 32 top men's team players — including 20 BCCI centrally contracted players and 12 under a new targeted/India 'A' category — underwent rehabilitation for injuries between April 2025 and March 2026.

A swelling list and a soaring budget

The list has only grown since, swelling further in the wake of IPL 2026, with at least two players breaking down in each subsequent series. According to the report, the BCCI increased the CoE's budget by nearly Rs 35 crore compared to the actual expenses of the previous financial year. The CoE's projected expenses for 2026-27 now stand at Rs 127 crore, up from Rs 92 crore in actual expenses last year, with the outlay covering administrative costs, courses and match expenses.

Captain and coach sound the alarm

India's Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill and head coach Gautam Gambhir have been vocal about how difficult it has become to plan tours because of a surge in injuries over the last year. While the report does not specify how many times each player reported to the CoE, it confirms that injuries to 68 players across genders were treated and managed by the BCCI-CoE Sports Science Medicine (SSM) team.

Soft-tissue the dominant complaint

In terms of the nature of the injuries, the majority were soft-tissue problems. The only impact-injury treatment named in the report was that of Rishabh Pant, who underwent treatment following a foot fracture sustained during a Test in Manchester in July 2025.

Intriguingly, the report also reveals that Rohit Sharma underwent rehabilitation at the CoE during this period — yet the BCCI never made an official statement about it. Rohit last reported to the CoE for a hamstring injury following this year's IPL.

The latest Team India players added to the list up to September 30 this year are Virat Kohli, Varun Chakravarthy, Prince Yadav and Harsh Dubey, besides multiple 'targeted' players. From the wider list, Jasprit Bumrah, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana, Hardik Pandya and Prasidh Krishna have been repeat cases. Rana, Pandya and Reddy have each spent at least four months at the CoE in the last 18 months.

No SSM head, and a breakdown in coordination

A striking administrative gap emerges from the findings: the BCCI only advertised the post of SSM head at the CoE last month. The role has been lying vacant since Nitin Patel resigned in March 2025. TOI understands there has been a breakdown in communication between Team India's SSM team and the CoE's SSM team, with cricket head VVS Laxman serving as the only medium of communication.

It has been learnt that Team India strength and conditioning (S&C) coach Adrian Le Roux suggested a few tweaks to workload-management routines in June 2025, while the CoE has been reluctant to deviate from its own mechanisms. Personnel from the CoE's SSM team did, however, travel to domestic tournaments to monitor key India players under the injury prevention and management programme.

Echoes of past injury spikes

The last time Indian cricket saw a spate of soft-tissue injuries was in 2021-22, when players suddenly moved out of bio-secure bubbles during the Covid-19 pandemic; that issue was brought under control within two to three months. In 2017, too, there was a three-month phase when multiple players broke down after S&C coach Shanker Basu introduced drastic changes to the fitness programme.

Camps missed, but 'training block' gains traction

According to the report, 15 of the 57 budgeted camps and tournaments were not conducted in the last audited year. The CoE did conduct 25 elite/high-performance camps across age groups and genders, besides special camps for the north-eastern states, and organised multiple courses and camps for S&C coaches, other coaches and match officials.

The CoE also launched a programme called the 'training block' for contracted and targeted/India 'A' players. Per the report, 37 players — including 11 contracted players and 26 India 'A'/targeted players — availed themselves of the programme, which focuses on strength and skill training.