NEWS
Follow UsRavichandran Ashwin was one of India's most important players for over a decade. His dominance at home is well-documented, but he was often overlooked in overseas Tests, playing the likes of Ravindra Jadeja or, more recently, even Washington Sundar ahead of him.
Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar is not pleased with this treatment of Ashwin and feels that the Indian team management used every opportunity to leave Ashwin out of the XI. "Cricket being a batters’ game, the fact that he invariably won the Player of the Series award didn’t win him kudos among the batters' fraternity," Gavaskar wrote in his column on Mid-Day.
"Every time there was even a five percent excuse to leave him out of the eleven, it was grabbed avidly with the excuse of team balance."
Gavaskar also questioned why the same logic was not applied to the batters. “At home, there was no way he could be left out because the management knew that without him, they could not win the game," he wrote.
"If the excuse was that the pitch and conditions wouldn’t suit the ICC number one-ranked bowler, how come the same excuse was not used for the batters even if they were not top-ranked by ICC, but who struggled in similar pitches and conditions?”
Gavaskar also reckons Ashwin would have been an excellent captain, and he was unjustly denied the position of at least vice-captain of the side.
"Ashwin would have made a fine captain for India, but he was denied even the honour of being the vice-captain. There was an opportunity to give him the belated honour even if it was for a token Test match and a limited-overs bilateral series, but that also was denied to him," Gavaskar, the first player to hit 10,000 Test runs, wrote.
"That’s why it was so good to see Rohit Sharma ask him to lead the team out on his 100th Test match."
Ashwin has never led India in his 287 matches for them. However, he has picked up 765 wickets across formats, the most by an Indian bowler after Anil Kumble (956).
