Former Australia cricketer-turned- commentator Ian Chappell on Friday (May 8) heaped praise on India head coach Ravi Shastri, saying he always had a shrewd and aggressive cricketing brain.
This aggression was one of the things which made the Indian side successful during the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. Notably, Shastri was the hero in India’s triumphant campaign and had won the famous Audi car for being ‘Player-of-the-Tournament’.
Speaking on a Facebook Live session with Rajdeep Sardesai, Chappell said: “Ravi Shastri has a shrewd cricketing brain.”
“The other thing about him is that it is a very aggressive cricket brain. If he is the captain he is trying to take wickets. This was one of the things about the 1985 India side. It was not a matter of containing the opposition for them,” he added.
Shastri represented India in 80 Tests and 151 ODIs. While he scored 3,830 and 3,108 runs in Tests and ODIs respectively, he picked up 151 and 129 scalps in each of the formats.
Describing Shastri as “someone who made the most of his abilities“, Chappell also recalled a story when the former India all-rounder drove him around in a car in Mumbai that later turned out to be the one the keys Chappell had handed over to him after the 1985 World Championship win.
During the conversation, Ian Chappell also named Erapalli Prasanna as the best spinner he had played against.
“My mind used to be worn out if I managed to play for some time against Prasanna. It is fascinating to listen to Prasanna talk about spin bowling because he is an engineer. He introduced concepts of engineering into the art of spin bowling,” he remarked.
(Inputs from The Indian Express)
