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Virat Kohli, other Indian cricketers take first jab of COVID-19 vaccination

Virat Kohli, Ishant Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara are some of the Indian cricketers who have taken their first coronavirus vaccine shots in Mumbai.

By Siddharth vishwanathan | May 11, 2021 | 2 Min Read

Virat Kohli and several Indian cricketers received their first jab of the coronavirus vaccine in Mumbai on Monday. India’s cricketers, along with several other athletes who have qualified for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, have started receiving their vaccine shots. The Indian government threw open the third stage of the vaccination for ages 18 to 44 from May 1. Apart from Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Shikha Pandey and Shikhar Dhawan have received their vaccination shots.

The Indian cricket team will enter a bio-bubble on May 25 for eight days. They will leave for the United Kingdom via charter flight. Once they reach the United Kingdom on June 2, they will be in 10 days of quarantine. The Indian cricketers will be allowed to train. Kohli’s team will play the ICC World Test Championship final against New Zealand in Southampton on June 18.

Both men and women’s cricket team to tour England

The Indian men’s cricket team will be in England for close to four months. After the end of the ICC World Test Championship final, India will play five Tests against England. However, those Tests will begin from August 4 and end on September 14. From June 23 till August 3, the Indian cricket team has no action scheduled. This is one of the reasons why the BCCI has allowed families to travel with the team.

On the other hand, the India women’s cricket team will tour England for a one-off Test followed by three ODIs and three Twenty20 Internationals. The Test against England will be the the first Test for the Indian women’s cricket team after seven years. Their last Test was in 2014 and that was also against England.

The ICC’s head of biosecurity, David Musker, has stressed that vaccination should be done at the earliest. Despite mutations, vaccines have a wide spread of efficacy and all of them do offer significant mitigation.

India is in the middle of a devastating second wave in the coronavirus pandemic. There have been over 350,000 cases every day in the last two weeks. The pandemic forced the postponement of the IPL 2021 after the bio-bubble was breached. In the last couple of days, cricketers Piyush Chawla and Chetan Sakariya lost their fathers due to COVID-19 complications. Veda Krishnamurthy lost her mother and sister due to the coronavirus.