BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia has attributed the frequent breakdown of Indian players in recent times to the high volume of matches they are playing and said that the board is "trying to find out some ways" to rectify the situation.
"Individual players are having injuries because they have to play a lot of matches," Saikia said. "If you look at their schedule, if you look at England, a 15-player team went for the ODI and out of that 15, three to four players got injured.
"But they had played two months of IPL prior to that. So all this takes toll on the health of the players also. And to avoid those kind of situations, what best we can do under the present windows and present FTPs, we are trying to find out some ways out."
The BCCI top brass met with the India head coach Gautam Gambhir, the director of cricket at the Centre of Excellence (CoE) VVS Laxman, the T20I captain Shreyas Iyer and ODI captain Shubman Gill in Mumbai on Thursday.
India could not field their best XIs across both the T20I and ODI legs in England, with the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Washington Sundar and Nitish Kumar Reddy injured either during the series or in the lead-up to it. India lost both the T20I and ODI series in England, while also going down in the two T20Is in Ireland previously.
For the upcoming T20I series against Afghanistan, too, four of the 15 players named are subject to fitness clearance, with Hardik Pandya still missing. ODI captain Gill too had recently emphasised players' "improving fitness" going forward.
Saikia said measures were being taken in the next Future Tours Programme (FTP) to ensure players get enough time to rest and recover.
"The only challenges which we are facing is that there are too many matches in the year and that is why in the next FTP, we will do certain things, we will take certain measures," he said. "We have instructed our FTP person, who we will be meeting very soon in various international forums that our FTP should be scheduled in such a way that there is proper rest for the players as well as some kind of acclimatisation or some kind of friendly matches before any major series in SENA countries.
"Today's discussion was on what what protocols we have to maintain regarding maintaining the fitness level of every player, not in any individual. And what is best interest of the team, we have considered that only. And we have taken the feedback from the captains and the head coach who are the right persons to give us the information so that we chalk up a proper strategy to avoid all these kind of unwanted situations during any international or bilateral matches."
'Have to do some soul-searching' after England and Ireland losses
India have a packed schedule for at least the next six months. After the T20I series against Afghanistan, which begins on September 13, they play an ODI and T20I series at home against West Indies, following which they travel to New Zealand for five T20Is and two Tests. They then play a white-ball series against Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, followed by the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at home. Saikia said that the intention of Wednesday's meeting was to have a roadmap for the next year leading into the 2027 ODI World Cup and also look back at some of the recent performances.
"You all know that we lost matches in Ireland and also in England. We wanted to know what are the reasons and we have to do some soul-searching about that. And in future, what we will be doing before going to any of the SENA countries, we have chopped out some strategies," Saikia said.
"Our main intention is that we should have the best team combination in the month of October, November next year in the ODI World Cup. We have basically thought about what should be our way forward about our team preparation and all, because we have a lot of series now."
Saikia also denied any rumours of miscommunication between the CoE, team management and selectors over player management, emphasising that "everybody is on the same page."
"There is no such situation that there is a communication breakdown or there is no integrity amongst the COE or the team India staff or technical persons. The only thing is that what is troubling us is that injuries to some players which is happening frequently and to avoid that, we have to do certain things. We have to take up some measures so that the players do not suffer injuries frequently."