Sourav Ganguly took a dig at the team management for dropping R Ashwin from the XI.© AFP
Team India have a huge mountain to climb in the ongoing World Test Championship (WTC) Final against Australia, with three full days of play left at The Oval. After Australia posted a mammoth total of 469, India crumbled to 151/5 at stumps on Day 2 and trail by 318 runs. India were 71/4 at one stage before Ravindra Jadeja and Ajinkya Rahane added 71 runs for the fifth wicket. However, Nathan Lyon dismissed Jadeja shortly before stumps to put Australia in the driver’s seat.
Highlighting Jadeja’s dismissal of Lyon’s delivery, former India captain Sourav Ganguly took a dig at the team management for dropping Ravichandran Ashwin from the playing XI.
“Who says off-spinner can’t play on a green pitch? Left-handed batter [Ravindra Jadeja] and Nathan Lyon. He has more than 400 wickets in Test cricket. At this moment, he dismissed India’s best batter. [It had both] Turn and Bounce,” Ganguly said while commentating.
Ganguly had earlier said that if he was captain, he would’ve found it hard to drop someone like Ashwin, who is the no.1 bowler in Test rankings.
“See it’s an afterthought. And I don’t believe in afterthoughts. As a captain, you take a decision before the toss and India had decided that they would go in with 4 fast bowlers. Having said that, in the last couple of years they have had success in the last couple of years with 4 pacers. They’ve won Test matches but if you ask me… if I was captaining – and every captain is different – Rohit and I think differently. I would find it very hard to keep a spinner out of Ashwin’s quality out of the XI,” Ganguly had said during Lunch on Day 1.
India now need a big partnership in the first innings and a strong bowling performance in the second innings to peg back Australia.
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