R Ashwin has taken a dig at critics for looking for topics to criticize Team India coach Rahul Dravid for his and team management’s decision of not including Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in the second and third ODIs against West Indies recently.
While Kohli and Rohit played in the first ODI, Rohit’s turn to bat came at no.7, while Kohli didn’t get a chance in the middle with the willow, as India made a hash of a modest chase of 114 runs. In the second ODI, under the captain of Hardik Pandya, India benched both the senior batters and India lost the match by 6 wickets.
This resulted in harsh criticism of coach Dravid and captain Rohit for their decision to bench two of their best players this close to the World Cup when India only has a handful of ODIs left to play, in the Asia Cup and then the 3 matches against Australia at home.
However, after India crushed West Indies in the third and final ODI by 200 runs and pocketed the series 2-1, veteran spinner R Ashwin said that some people are just trying to find reasons to blame the captain-coach duo without understanding the extent of the injuries the squad has at the moment.
"India lost the second ODI and immediately the trend in social media was - why so-and-so players played and why so-and-so players did not play. I seriously don't understand why this outrage. Rohit and Virat didn't play in the second ODI. Even in the first match, Rohit batted lower down the order. So the debate was around whether Rohit and Virat should have played," Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
Ashwin even highlighted the sort of expectations fans have from the Indian team, expecting them to win almost every time they play.
"Some of them were perplexed at how we lost to a team that didn't even qualify for the World Cup. Many people think that India's only job in international cricket is to win the World Cup. The main reason why we consider ourselves favorites to win the World Cup is because of the IPL," he added.
Amongst the players injured, Jasprit Bumrah and Prasidh Krishna will make their India comebacks on the Ireland T20I tour. But the likes of Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, and KL Rahul are still undergoing rehab. Ashwin, hence, found plenty of logic in the rest given to Rohit and Kohli.
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"Already we have so many players recovering at the NCA. Bumrah is back after a long hiatus. Prasidh Krishna is back too. So, we have so many injury problems. It seems like people are finding points to blame Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma just for the sake of it.
They are trying different players now because they know what they went through during the last T20 World Cup. We didn't have Ravindra Jadeja and Bumrah and we didn't have many fast bowlers. That's why we are trying different options before the ODI World Cup," the off-spinner stated while defending Dravid and Rohit.
India and West Indies will now clash in a series of 5 T20Is starting August 3rd in Tarouba, Trinidad.
