Veteran spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has not featured in a single Test match for India in 2019. Even though he keeps reinventing himself to come up with new variations to trouble opposition batsmen, the off-spinner found himself sitting out during the recent tours due to injuries.

However, head coach Ravi Shastri defended the decision to bench the spinner and said it was tactical. While talking to Hindustan Times, Shastri said, “Those are tactical things, which I can’t speak to you. You saw in the West Indies what happened, and now you will see the results. You can’t ask me who plays in the eleven because everyone is part of us.”

According to Ravi Shastri who was a spinner in the Indian team back in the day, in the fight for the top spinner’s place, India has more than one world-class spinner.

He further explained his point by saying, “He (Ashwin) is world-class, we got Ravindra Jadeja who is world-class, we got Kuldeep Yadav who will be world-class in due course, he is still young.”

While talking about the change according to the situation in the Indian team, the 57-year-old said, “Sometimes in cricket nothing is automatic; when automatic fails you need some fuel.”

The 33-year-old off-spinner from Chennai has 342 scalps in just 65 Tests along with 150 wickets in 111 ODIs and 52 wickets in 46 T20Is.]

(With News18.com inputs)