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Top India cricketers are being called out for skipping domestic cricket ahead of Test series against Bangladesh and New Zealand at home.
India will next take on Australia in a five-match Test series. (BCCI Photo)
As the Indian men’s cricket team starts recovering from their recent 0-3 thrashing to New Zealand at home, plenty of questions are being asked regarding their sorry show. Given their struggles against spinners, batting legend Sunil Gavaskar has suggested that the players could have been better prepared for the challenge had they taken part in a few domestic matches. Test regulars Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja among others skipped Duleep Trophy which was held right before the Bangladesh Test series in September. The likes of KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal. Shubman Gill, Sarfaraz Khan did participate in the competition.
Gavaskar has cited how Sachin Tendulkar played in a warm-up fixture for Mumbai against the visiting Australians in 1998 to prepare for the home Test series. Former selector and India opener Devang Gandhi also gave the example of Tendulkar playing a couple of Ranji Trophy matches in the grueling heat of April in 2000 right after playing ODIs till end of March.
Former chief selector and India wicketkeeper-batter MSK Prasad has a different opinion. He sympathises with the players taking rest given the volume of cricket played these days that includes T20Is and two months of IPL.
“It is unlike Kapil paaji and Sunny sir’s days, volume of cricket has increased exponentially. It takes a lot out of cricketers,” Prasad was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
“I think, the one-off Irani Cup match is where the BCCI can make it mandatory for stars to show up for the Rest of India team but they have to slot it at a time which is not overlapping with a Test series,” he added.
He feels that it’s time to bring back the structured rotation policy to manage workloads that the selection committee led by him introduced between 2017 and 2021.
“I do not know why the rotation system started by us to ensure breaks for players has been done away with, you did not need all the stars to play against Bangladesh,” Prasad said.
He advised scheduling home Test series right after the start of Ranji season which will give India Test players a window to participate.
“A good way is to schedule a home Test series in such a manner that at least one or two Ranji rounds precede it instead of running parallelly, which has been the case all this while,” Prasad said.
