“Let’s put it this way: there are quite a few in the last three or four years who are permanent residents of the NCA,” Shastri said on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 Time:Out show ahead of Super Kings’s home match against Rajasthan Royals on Wednesday. “Soon, they’ll get a resident permit there to walk in any time they want, which is not a good thing at all. It’s unreal.”
Shastri said that what bothered him the most was that most of these players’ workloads were not too big and despite being declared fit by the NCA medical team, they were still picking up injuries.
“Come on, you’re not playing that much cricket to be injured again and again,” Shastri said. “I mean, you can’t play four matches on the trot. What are you going to the NCA for? If you are going to come back and then three matches [later] you’re back there. So make sure you get fit and come once and for all because it’s damn frustrating. Not just for the team, the players, the BCCI, the captains of the various [IPL] franchises. It’s annoying, to say the least.
“I can understand a serious injury, but every four games when someone touches his hamstring or someone touches his groin, you start thinking what are these guys… what are they training, what’s going on. And some of them don’t play any other cricket in the year. It’s just four overs [in the IPL], man, three hours. The game is over.”