Hardik Pandya is still three weeks from jogging as reports point to an IPL 2027 return

Hardik Pandya has not played a competitive match since May and, on the latest account of his rehabilitation, is not expected to play one again until the IPL in 2027

India's first-choice white-ball all-rounder is still about three weeks away from jogging, according to a report in Dainik Jagran on Wednesday that has been picked up across the Indian press. He remains at the BCCI's Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, where the board's head of sports medicine, Dinshaw Pardiwala, went through his file on 14 October.

The programme that follows is deliberately slow. Once Pandya starts jogging, his running load is to be built up over the next eight weeks, with strength work raised in step and the whole plan running through to early January. No date has been fixed for match fitness.

That takes him past India's home white-ball season and leaves the IPL, which usually begins in late March, as the first realistic place for a comeback. There has been no statement from the BCCI.

Three weeks from a jog

The injury at the centre of it is a stress problem on the inner side of his lower right leg, the latest in a sequence that has followed him through the year.

It is the same area that ended his September. Named in the India A squad for the one-day series against Australia A subject to fitness, Pandya was withdrawn after scans showed a symptomatic right tibial bone stress response, with the medical team reporting no structural damage and no established stress fracture. Two weeks of rest were advised and Suryansh Shedge took his place.

Rest did not settle it. The jogging date now being discussed is the first marker on a rehabilitation that has already consumed a season.

Five months since his last match

Pandya last took the field in IPL 2026, captaining Mumbai Indians in their final league game on 24 May. He has not played for India in any format since the T20 World Cup final against New Zealand in Ahmedabad, and his last ODI was the Champions Trophy final of March 2025.

The gap widened one series at a time. Back spasms cost him three Mumbai Indians matches in early May, and a quadriceps strain picked up during a fitness assessment in June ruled him out of the Afghanistan ODIs and the tours of Ireland and England.

In September he failed to bowl his mandatory ten overs in a first fitness test, then broke down again in a second. "International cricket can be extremely tough on your body as well," head coach Gautam Gambhir said at the time, explaining why India were not pushing him back.

What he misses between now and April

Pandya was not considered for the tour of New Zealand, and the report rules him out of the home series against Sri Lanka, three ODIs and three T20Is beginning on 13 December, and the three ODIs against Zimbabwe from 3 January.

The domestic white-ball season offers no way back either, with the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the Vijay Hazare Trophy both falling inside the rehabilitation window. He does not play Test cricket, so the five-match series against Australia from 21 January does not apply to him.

Pant and Prasidh on separate programmes

Pandya is not the only India player working at the Centre of Excellence. Rishabh Pant, who strained a side during the Irani Trophy, reported there after a fortnight's rest and is due to begin light skill work, with his availability for the Tests in New Zealand still dependent on fitness.

Prasidh Krishna, who hurt a hamstring during the ODI series against West Indies, is further along and was scheduled for match simulations on 22 and 23 October before a decision on his workload across formats.

The World Cup clock

The deeper problem is what a lost year does to Pandya's preparation for the 2027 World Cup in southern Africa, which India will approach with him having played almost no 50-over cricket in the cycle.

Gambhir has been direct about what that costs. "You can't go into a World Cup half-cooked," he said in a JioHotstar interview on 25 September, adding: "Whether it's Hardik (Pandya), whether it's Jasprit Bumrah, they are going to be extremely important for us in (South) Africa."

India open their T20I series in New Zealand at Hagley Oval on Thursday, another tour Pandya follows from Bengaluru.

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