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India’s home cricket matches against England came to an end on July 17. Following this, India fly to the West Indies where they will participate in 3 ODIs and 5 T20Is. Shikhar Dhawan-led India will rest key players like captain Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah in the first 3-match ODI series of the tour starting on July 22. Following that, captain Rohit Sharma will return for the 5-match T20 series starting on July 29. Under his leadership, Tamil Nadu star Ravichandran Ashwin has been included in the Indian white ball team again after 8 months.
Ashwin’s comeback:
He made his debut in T20 cricket in 2010 and has emerged as the main spinner in all 3 formats of the Indian team since 2011 due to his impressive performance in the domestic and IPL series. So he played as the lead spinner in the ICC World Cups of 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 under then captain MS Dhoni who nurtured him. But in 2017, when Dhoni stepped down as the captain, Virat Kohli, who took over as the new captain, began to remove him completely because of his poor bowling in the Champions Trophy in England.
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Also, he supported Sahal-Kuldeep Yadav as the primary spin bowling partnership and he tried to bring Kuldeep Yadav into competition in the Test matches as well, but Ashwin did a great job in not giving him space. However, everyone thought that his white-ball cricket career was over as the Indian team management ignored him as he performed well in the IPL series. In that situation, after the 2019 World Cup Dhoni retired, Sahal – Kuldeep pair lost their form and bowled moderately, Ashwin performed well as usual in the IPL series.
Volatile Opportunity:
In addition to this, due to the decline of Virat Kohli’s power in the Indian administration, Ashwin, who was directly selected for the T20 World Cup held in Dubai in 2021, made a comeback in white ball cricket after 4 years. Despite not being fully available in that World Cup, he performed well in the opportunities he got and then impressed in the New Zealand T20 series at home in November.
Therefore, the selectors did not see him again in the T20 series against the West Indies and Sri Lanka after he was injured in the ODI series in South Africa last January. And although Ashati scored his first half-century with the bat in the IPL 2022 series, he did not select Ashwin again in the subsequent T20 series like South Africa and Ireland.
But now the former Indian player Akash Chopra who is questioning on what basis he has been selected for the West Indies series has accused the selectors of using Ashwin like garbage. Here’s what he said about it on his YouTube page. “Ashwin’s return to the team is interesting. But what is the vision behind it? Why is he not in the team for the last 8-10 months? Why has he been dropped and now reinstated after playing so well in the T20 World Cup?”
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“He gave a comeback so to speak and performed well in only 5 matches. He didn’t get too many opportunities after that. You should have played him in the Sri Lanka and South Africa T20 series as well. And he was not used during his recent stay in England and in the T20 series there,” he said, criticizing the erratic selection of the selectors.
Sahal, Ravi Bishnoi, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, all the spinners in the team were either leg spinners or left-arm spinners which put the Indian team at a disadvantage. So it is worth noting that the Indian management has chosen Ashwin even now because there is no good off-spinner.
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