Gavaskar lashes out at selectors for resting these two players for West Indies series
India is scheduled to play against West Indies in a home series from October 4, 2018, at Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Rajkot as the first Test match kick starts from there. The hosts made a lot of changes in their squad as some new faces came to the side while a lot of players are rested and dropped from the squad.
Young Prithvi Shaw, Mohammad Siraj and Mayank Agarwal broke into the national side while the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Hardik Pandya, Karun Nair, Dinesh Karthik, Ishant Sharma, and Murali Vijay were either rested or dropped for the upcoming series.
The list of rested players also included the names of fast bowlers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah for which Mohammad Siraj and Shardul Thakur made it to the side. To this, former Indian skipper Sunil Gavaskar lashed out at selectors and didn't go well with their decision of omitting these two top guns.
“India resting both Bhuvneshwar and Bumrah is a surprise, for it shows that Test matches don’t seem to matter for the selectors. Were both the bowlers asked if they wanted a break? If a break has to be given do that in the limited overs internationals, but not Test cricket, for if Test cricket is to survive it needs the best players to be available all the time,” Gavaskar wrote this in his column for a leading newspaper The Times of India.
However, Gavaskar also realised that Thakur and Siraj have given a golden opportunity to perform well and make a case for themselves for the Australia tour at the end of this year. “Their absence gives a chance for Thakur and Siraj to show what they are capable of and try and cement their places for the tour to Australia,” Gavaskar added.
Here is the squad of the Indian team to play against the West Indies:
India Squad: Virat Kohli (C), KL Rahul, Prithvi Shaw, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur.