India captain Rohit Sharma hoped that ace spinners R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja keep playing for a long time to come and keep performing for the national side, after his team’s 2-1 triumph in the four-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023 series over Australia.
Both Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin were awarded the Player of the Series award winners as they picked 22 and 25 wickets respectively. Jadeja also contributed with the bat and had won the Player of the Match awards in India’s two Test wins in the series in Nagpur and Delhi.
After the match, India captain Rohit Sharma was asked in the press conference if both the spinners will be around when the Border-Gavaskar Trophy will next be played in India after four years.
Rohit gave a straight answer and didn’t shy from lavishing praise for the two, calling them one of the biggest assets of the team in the last decade.
Replying to the same, Rohit Sharma said: “I don’t know honestly if they’ll be around. I don’t know if I will be around. Four years is a long time. Honestly, for the sake of Indian cricket, I hope they stay and play a lot of cricket. Both of them are marathon players for us.
They know exactly how to get the job done. Especially in this part of the world, you give them the ball, they get you those breakthroughs. With the bat they get you crucial runs. Very, very important players for us.”
This series win over Australia extended India’s unbeaten run in Test cricket at home to 10 years, since their last series loss to England in 2012. Rohit Sharma credited Jadeja and Ashwin for ensuring that India dominated at home in red-ball cricket consistently.
“They know how to get the job done, especially in this part of the world, you give them the ball and they get you those breakthroughs. With the bat, they get you crucial runs with the bat… Where we stand today in terms of how we perform in Indian conditions, a lot of credit goes to them.
A large part of our success belongs to those two guys. It’s not just for a period of a few years, it’s over a decade now. It’s a long long time to keep performing the way these two guys have done for us. I can only hope that they continue to play for as long as possible because those shoes will definitely be very, very big to fill,” the captain signed off.
While Ashwin will have to wait for the next Test assignment for India, Ravindra Jadeja will be seen in action in the three-ODI series against Australia which begins on March 17.
(Firstpost inputs)
