Former India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin did not hold back while talking about India’s recent struggles in ODIs, offering a candid assessment of what he saw as a worrying dip in intensity.
On ‘Ash ki Baat’, Ashwin said: “I thought if India even plays their B or C teams, they can beat sides. I am a little worried now that this has nothing to do with the team’s quality. Looking from the outside, I think the Indian team’s response has been a bit flat. That response is not there. Always, when the team has been put under pressure, the Indian team has found ways in the past and has shown that habit. I just felt that the response felt flat, and that was disappointing. I do not think we put them under pressure. We played very soft cricket.”
India won the first match in the recently concluded ODI series against New Zealand, but the Kiwis defeated the ‘Men in Blue’ comfortably in the last two ODIs to clinch the series. This was India’s second series loss in their last three. In Australia, India could win only the final match of the three-match series when the series was already decided. However, they defeated South Africa at home by 2-1.
Ashwin believes that all these performances will be forgotten if the result in the T20 World Cup is good.
“Everything will be forgotten now. There is the T20 World Cup and the IPL now. So, if the environment is there, things will go accordingly. We all know this. But if the T20 World Cup does not go well and people do not perform in the IPL too, there will be pressure on them. But if everything goes well, this series will be forgotten. In my books, New Zealand won the series 5-0. They won two but threatened to win one more too, so it was actually a sweep,” he concluded.
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