Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin was not happy with the ongoing criticism of the pitches in the ongoing four-match Test series against England. India has a lead of 2-1 after three matches, winning the last two matches on turning wickets in Chennai and Ahmedabad.
However, the two losses, by 317 runs in Chennai in the second Test and the recent 10-wicket loss in Ahmedabad have not gone down well with the former England players who have been furious at the pitches which have been suiting the spinners from day one.
The likes of Alastair Cook, David Lloyd, Michael Vaughan, and many others have been calling the pitches poor advertisement of Test cricket and asking the ICC to intervene and take a call on pitches that are favoring the home side.
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However, there have been likes of Kevin Pietersen and Nasser Hussain who have said that instead of blaming the pitch, England should better themselves in trying to tackle the spin menace.
There also have been calls that England didn’t complain when they recently won 2-0 in Sri Lanka on similar pitches and Joe Root slammed a double ton and a century in those Tests.
Meanwhile, giving a fitting reply to the detractors R Ashwin used marketing jargon to put across his point that all the criticism of the turning track in the previous two Tests have been nothing but trying to market the idea that pitches that turn are not good for Test cricket and only seaming and bouncing tracks are what keeping the Test cricket alive.
Ashwin tweeted, “Products are sold using various marketing strategies and that’s an accepted practice! We now live in an era where ideas are also being sold to us and it’s a classic example of “outbound marketing”, however, I would like to add that buying ideas being sold to us is like telling us.”
He further mentioned that the narrative has been that we don’t know anything and what we say is the right thing. He used one sentence to sum it all saying, “As long as we are going to buy it, they will shove it down our throat.”
Finally. We can always have and stand by our opinions even if it’s against the majority as long as we know that it is our own and not the one that's been sold to us! The choice is always ours”
