NEW DEL­HI, In­dia – In­dia’s wick­et­keep­er/bats­man Rishabh Pant will miss next month’s two Test se­ries against West In­dies with a frac­tured left foot.

Pant suf­fered the in­jury dur­ing the tour of Eng­land in Ju­ly and is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion at the BC­CI’s Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ben­galu­ru.

He is ex­pect­ed to be re­placed by Dhruv Ju­rel for the West In­dies se­ries.

In­dia will play the first Test of the se­ries in Ahmed­abad from Oc­to­ber 2, while the sec­ond Test is sched­uled to be­gin on Oc­to­ber 10 in Del­hi.

The 27-year-old Pant, who served as In­dia’s vice-cap­tain in the An­der­son-Ten­dulkar Tro­phy in Eng­land this year, frac­tured his foot while at­tempt­ing a re­verse sweep against Chris Woakes on the open­ing day of the fourth Test at Old Traf­ford.

He was sub­se­quent­ly re­placed by N Ja­gadeesan in the squad for the fi­nal Test at the Oval.

It is learned that Pant has been un­der­go­ing strength and con­di­tion­ing and is await­ing fur­ther up­dates from the BC­CI med­ical team be­fore he can re­sume bat­ting and keep­ing.

Ju­rel, who is cur­rent­ly in Luc­know play­ing against Aus­tralia ‘A’, kept wick­et in the fi­nal two Tests of the An­der­son-Ten­dulkar Tro­phy.

Ja­gadeesan, who opened in the first match against Aus­tralia ‘A’, as well as swapped keep­ing du­ties with Ju­rel, could be the back-up in case the se­lec­tors opt for a sec­ond spe­cial­ist wick­et­keep­er for the West In­dies se­ries.

In­dia’s se­lec­tion meet­ing for the se­ries is sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 24, where the Ajit Agarkar-led pan­el will pick 15 play­ers, which is two few­er than the squad for the New Zealand Tests last Oc­to­ber, the last home se­ries In­dia played.

CMC