Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has defended the Indian team management after Ravichandran Ashwin hinted that a lack of clarity pushed senior players like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to retire from Test cricket.
On his YouTube channel, Ashwin shared that he, Kohli and Rohit felt uncertain about their future, which led them towards their Test retirements.
“There must be a certain pathway for transition,” he said. “When there is no clarity, it becomes an individualistic decision. Virat could have groomed players. Rohit could have done that. I could have done that. I have always spoken about the importance of knowledge transfer. It has never been our strength.”
The Indian Test team is undergoing a transition under new head coach Gautam Gambhir. Fans believed that India’s 0–2 home Test loss to South Africa might have ended with a better result if the senior players had been part of the series.
However, Gavaskar disagreed with Ashwin’s remarks.
“No, the call to retire must have been their own,” Gavaskar said in a conversation with Aaj Tak. “Probably, they might have been asked to consider their future. But we can’t say that had they been here, we would have won. They were there when we lost to New Zealand. What happened when they were there? We lost 0–3, didn’t we? Then what happened in Australia? We should not be thinking along these lines. No, we cannot be thinking about whether we pushed them to retirement. That is the wrong way to approach this.”
Rohit and Kohli will be seen in action when India take on South Africa in the first ODI in Ranchi on November 30.
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