India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Thursday said they will badly miss "street-smart" Praveen Kumar in the upcoming World Cup as the pacer has been ruled out of cricket's showpiece event due to an elbow injury.
Praveen, who has been a vital cog in India's ODI scheme of things for a little over three years and was certain in India's seam attack in the World Cup, was ruled out on Monday after failing to recover from an elbow injury which he sustained during the South Africa tour.
"It is very unfortunate that Praveen had to miss the World Cup. He featured consistently in the ODIs for us. He is a street-smart cricketer and he will miss him a lot," Dhoni said during a pre-tournament press conference here.
"But you can't really restrict injuries from happening to players," he added.
Without mentioning the names, he also indicated that Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Sachin Tendulkar all have recovered from their injuries and will be totally fit by the time India play their tournament-opener against Bangladesh in Dhaka on February 19.
"A few players are suffering from slight niggles, which is always there but nothing serious. Hopefully, nothing major happens to any player," the skipper said.
The World Cup has come in for its share of criticism from some quarters for its length which spans around 45 days, but Dhoni reiterated that a perfect scheduling is always difficult to churn out and the rest period between matches will help the players to recover from their niggles.
"As I have said earlier it is very difficult to form a perfect schedule and format. A tournament schedule will be either too long or too short but I am quite happy with the schedule. It will give us time to recover from small niggles," he insisted.