Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan to miss T20 vs Sri Lanka

India will be without Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan for the one-off Twenty20 International against Sri Lanka at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium on Tuesday.

Sehwag and Zaheer have already left for India, said Ravi Jain, the team's media manager. Sehwag is yet to recover from a glute problem that forced him to miss the final One-Day International last Saturday, and has returned home for treatment and rehabilitation.

Zaheer, meanwhile, has returned to prepare for the two-Test series against New Zealand, beginning in Hyderabad on August 23. Zaheer's unavailability for the T20I has to be construed as an indication that he doesn't figure in India's World T20 scheme of things. Zaheer hasn't played a T20I since May 2010, though on Saturday night, Duncan Fletcher, the India coach, had categorically refrained from making any statement on whether Zaheer was in India's T20 mix.

"When it comes to selection, I am not on the selection panel," Fletcher had said. "It will be very wrong for me to discuss selection plans and policies. That's the kind of question that you need to ask the selectors about."

Sehwag's injury isn't very serious and he is expected to be fit for the Test series against New Zealand. Earlier in the day, a team official had stated, during a press conference, that Sehwag was fit and available for Tuesday's encounter, before the announcement in the evening that he had indeed returned home.