Virat Kohli explains dropping Ravichandran Ashwin

Ravichandran Ashwin (L) and Virat Kohli

India’s Virat Kohli, who captained the Adelaide Test against Australia in the absence of M.S. Dhoni, has said that the decision to leave out Ravichandran Ashwin was his own – taken based on the predicted nature of the drop-in wicket – and that he has no regrets over it. 

The pitch at Adelaide, from being flat in the first two days, started assisting spin as the match progressed, and Australian off-spinner Nathon Lyon cashed in on it – to pick up 12 wickets and deliver a dramatic victory to the home team on the last day of the fixture. Indian spinner Karn Sharma, on the other hand, struggled to replicate the same and ended up with match figures of 4 for 238. 

The Indian management’s decision to hand a debut to a rookie in place of a more experienced Ashwin came in for some criticism, as the visitors struggled to make any inroads, managing only a total of 12 Australian wickets in the entire match. 

It was my personal decision to leave Ashwin out

Taking up complete responsibility for leaving out the off-spinner in favour of Karn, Kohli – explaining the rationale behind the decision – said: “That was my personal decision. I felt that Karn (Sharma) was bowling better than the other two spinners at the time, in the warm-up games and the practice sessions as well. And, this might sound funny, but someone had told me that it is a drop-in wicket, which will stay flat throughout. It ended up turning square. It was my personal decision. No regrets.”

When asked if he would pick a different line-up if given a chance now after looking at the way the pitch behaved, he said: “I might have (made a different call). You never know. But this is what we went in with. Again these are all big ifs. If I knew that this is going to happen, my decision could have been different. Maybe play both spinners. You never know. Those are again things that aren’t in our control as of now.”