The modern Indian batters look more accustomed to handling world-class pace bowling than spin. The Kolkata Test against South Africa laid bare India’s troubles against spin bowling again, seeing the Gautam Gambhir-led team management’s decision to demand a turning pitch backfire. Seeing India batters struggle, Ravichandran Ashwin didn’t hesitate in suggesting that players of some Western countries are better than Indians at playing spin. The legendary Sunil Gavaskar has now explained why.
“We are not the best players of spin going around in the world at this point in time. Most Western teams are better than India now because they come to India, they practice it a lot more, but we don’t practice enough of it. But we are superior players of fast bowling in many other venues right now because we consider that as a challenge, but not this. That is the difference,” Ashwin had said.
Gavaskar, who has time and again advocated a return to domestic cricket, didn’t hesitate in highlighting how Indian players shy away from playing the Ranji Trophy, even when they have time off. Hence, expecting excellence from them on turning pitches, which are also used in domestic cricket, would be too much.
“A lot of our players do not play domestic cricket. If you play domestic cricket, you will get to play on such pitches, right? Because even at the domestic level, teams are trying to get the points so that they qualify for the knockouts of the Ranji Trophy, which means that there will be pitches where the ball will grip and turn a little bit,” the India great Sports Tak. “But none of our players are playing that. None of our current players. How many of our current players actually deign to go down and play Ranji Trophy?”
Gavaskar has also been a vocal critic of ‘workload management’ of players. For him, a player should be ready to play all games for the country, no matter when the call comes. Even missing Ranji Trophy games due to workload management isn’t something that the batting great advocates.
“No, they don’t because there’s this word called workload. Workload is the word. They don’t want to play. They don’t want to play. They only want to play in the Ranji Trophy if they are out of form. Otherwise, they don’t want to play. So that is the answer. Maybe you want to look at, you know, preparing a pitch where the ball will grip and turn a little bit. Then you want to pick guys who are playing domestic cricket. We do not really want to play guys who are playing international cricket because they don’t have the practice against such kind,” he added.