Asia Cup 2018: Former selector Sandeep Patil lashes out at the decision to rest Virat Kohli
Resting Virat Kohli for the upcoming Asia Cup has garnered a lot of criticism from many cricket fans and pundits. The reason being, this has come out to be the second incident (resting Virat Kohli) in the past few months. Moreover, the presence of strong teams like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan has raised the questions of resting Virat Kohli for such a significant league. A good bunch of criticisms has come up from the former selector Sandeep Patil.
Patil has seemed to be critical about Kohli's exclusion from the Asia Cup 2018 and has laid all the weight on the current set of selectors.
Patil scratching his head over Virat's exclusion from Asia Cup
To start with, Patil in his column for The Quint penned, "As a former chairman of the selection committee, I do agree that players’ workload should be taken into account but when it comes to India-Pakistan matches – in which the cricket-loving people of India get so emotionally and sentimentally involved – it makes it difficult to understand why such a decision was made. In fact, it is not just the fans, even players and board officials of both the countries feel very strongly about this one big match-up."
Patil suggests that the decision of resting could have made in the home series against West Indies
"The decision to give rest to Virat Kohli has already been taken, but the question is whether selectors could have delayed it by picking Virat for the Asia Cup and giving him rest instead during the home series against West Indies that will follow," continued Sandeep Patil.
"I don’t blame Virat Kohli but my question again is that there are thirty plus players under contract for the BCCI and all of them play an equal number of matches and share an equal amount of workload, then why to single out Virat Kohli," concluded Patil about his concern over Virat's exclusion from the much-awaited Asia Cup.