Virat, Rohit, Shastri, Dravid, Gambhir come under fire for mistreating Ravichandran Ashwin

Be it Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma as captains or Ravi Shastri, Rahul Dravid, and Gautam Gambhir as head coaches, Ravichandran Ashwin was made to warm the bench in overseas Test matches. His father called it a humiliation after the legendary cricketer announced his retirement from international cricket.

Former India player Sunil Gavaskar has slammed the team management for excluding Ashwin from the Playing XI for the sake of an ideal team combination. He didn’t take names, but the great batter was referring to the captains and coaches in whose tenures Ashwin had to go through tough times when India played in Australia, England, South Africa, and New Zealand.

The 38-year-old decided to quit after the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25. He played in the second game, but Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja got the nod in the series opener and third Test.

Ashwin played just 26 matches in SENA countries in 14 years.

“Cricket is a batters game and despite winning the Player of the Series awards, Ashwin was not appreciated as much as he deserved. Even if the team management had a five percent excuse to remove him from the XI, it was grabbed for the sake of maintaining team balance,” he wrote in his column for mid-day.

Gavaskar mentioned that the same rule was not in place for the batters who failed in different parts of the world.

“Ashwin was irreplaceable at home as the management knew that India can’t win matches without him. If the excuse of the pitch and conditions was given for dropping him, why the same didn’t apply for the batters, who were below-par in the SENA countries,” he further wrote.

Ashwin took 765 wickets across formats in international cricket, while his tally was 537 scalps in Test cricket. He won the Player of the Series award 11 times in his career.

Click here to read article