Indian cricketing legend Sunil Gavaskar has said that Ravichandran Ashwin has proven all those experts wrong who complained about the pitch for the second Test between India and England in Chennai.
A lot of former cricketers and English commentators have ridiculed the pitch used for the second Test calling it a 'sandpit' and a 'beach'. They have labelled the pitch as 'unplayable' after England were skittled out for 134 in their first innings.
However, it was R Ashwin who proved that the pitch had not deteriorated after India's first innings effort of 329, where opener Rohit Sharma scored 161. The Chennai boy registered his 5th Test century on Day 3 and shut down all the critics that blamed the pitch for England's poor first innings score.
IND v ENG 2021: "Ashwin is pretty much unplayable in these conditions," says Sunil Gavaskar
Sunil Gavaskar told India Today, "This was a fabulous innings, this was where he (Ashwin) walked the talk. Yesterday at the media conference, he was asked about the pitch and he said it was like a seaming pitch. 'All you gotta do is show a little bit of patience, get used to the pitch and then start scoring runs'. That's exactly what he showed."
"He showed that on this pitch, you can stay, you can score runs and it is not what all these other people are making it out to be. The perennial complainers and the perennial guys who are always criticising Indian cricket."
"We have known them for such a long time and he has proven all of them wrong because if the pitch was that bad, how did India score that many runs more than twice what England did in the first innings?" he added.
The 71-year-old is delighted to see Ashwin get back in touch with his batting, which didn't seem to be up to the mark for some period of time now. He thinks that Ashwin batting at No. 7 gave him a sense of responsibility as compared to when he thought of himself only as bowler batting at No. 8.
Gavaskar said, "His (Ashwin) performance was amazing. And he just gets better with the ball. You can see the way he is lining up batsmen, setting the batsmen. Most importantly, he is giving this Indian batting a lot of confidence."
"After he got those 4 Test hundreds, his batting had gone down just that little bit, maybe because he was batting down the order at No. 8, maybe he did think of him more as a bowler and getting out despite getting starts," he added.
