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India Star Forgets Item At Hotel Ahead Of Departure To Birmingham, Labelled Next Rohit Sharma
India all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy left an item at the team's hotel in Leeds, ahead of the departure for the second Test, starting July 2 at Edgbaston in Birmingham. India trail 0-1 in the five-match series as England won the series opener at Headingley by five wickets earlier this week. However, Reddy did not feature in the match as the team management opted to go with veteran all-rounder Shardul Thakur instead. With less than a week remaining for the start of the 2nd Test, the Indian team departed for Birmingham earlier this week.
However, before the team's departure, an interesting incident took place as Reddy forgot an item at the team hotel and was spotted leaving the bus to collect it. He returned to the bus after a while and was also spotted having a chat with the security head of the Indian team.
Reddy's forgetfulness reminded a fan of Rohit Sharma, who also has an habit of forgetting things at team hotels.
Nitish Kumar Reddy forgets things like Rohit does in the hotel room
— Shikha (@Shikha_003) June 27, 2025
India head coach Gautam Gambhir defended captain Shubman Gill 's decision to under bowl Shardul, who could be dropped for the second game in Birmingham.
In his first Test since December 2023, Shardul was under-utilised in the pace department and was rather underwhelming with the bat, totalling five off 20 balls across two innings.
Questions were raised about his presence in the playing eleven ahead of a specialist bowler when he rolled his arm over for six overs in the first innings before bowling 10 in the second.
Like he often does, Shardul did pick a couple of wickets out of nowhere to raise hopes of an Indian comeback on day five but the bite in his bowling was missing. He alongside the likes of Prasidh Krishna offered too many loose balls, lacking consistency to test the opposition batters.
With India losing the game having controlled for a major part of five days, there is no need to ring the alarm bells but a few changes are certain in the playing eleven for the Edgbaston Test..
Experts cried out for Kuldeep Yadav 's inclusion in the series opener and now he is most likely to replace Shardul with the surface expected to aid the spinners in Birmingham..
"Kuldeep needs to be there. There is no point playing with four pacers. Either of Shardul or Prasidh can make way for him," former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar told PTI.
