Sunil Gavaskar indicates senior Indian players might be playing Ranji to save their contracts

Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar once again courted controversy over his comments on the current Indian cricketers. 

The batting legend from the yesteryears lambasted senior Mumbai batters Rohit Sharma, Shreyas Iyer, and Yashasvi Jaiswal for their aggressive shots in the Ranji Trophy game against Jammu & Kashmir, which Mumbai lost. 

“The dismissal of Mumbai’s Test batters once again brought to the fore the perils of the all-out aggressive mode of batting that is nowadays thought of as being central to run-making,” Gavaskar said in his column. 

“It can work on flat pitches, but on pitches where the ball is doing something, there has to be a technique good enough to keep out the good delivery.”

Gavaskar cited the example from the recent loss in the Sydney Test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) where he felt the Indian batters lacked situational awareness and common sense. 

"There are more chances of a dismissal while looking to play in a manner that one is not used to, as was seen in the recent Sydney Test [between India and Australia] when rushes of blood caused some silly-looking dismissals,” Gavaskar said. 

“A bit of common sense and patience, rather than a fatalistic approach, could have gotten another 50 runs, and that could well have altered the result of the match and the series.”

He questioned if the Indian batters actually participated in the recent domestic season just to save their national contracts as the BCCI made it mandatory for them to be available for playing domestic cricket. 

“Whether their hearts were in it or they did that only to ensure they were not stripped of their BCCI contracts, like Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer were, after missing out on the Ranji Trophy games last year, is known only to them,” Gavaskar remarked. 

“Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal’s participation meant that Ayush Mhatre, who had got a couple of hundreds and some fifties, had to be left out of the Mumbai side. Hopefully, the youngster would have spent some time with both these players and picked their brains about adding to his batting ability.”

He also wondered if the Indian stars would be participating in the next round of Ranji Trophy which is beginning from January 30. 

"It would be interesting to see if KL Rahul, Mohammed Siraj, and Virat Kohli, who didn’t play in last week’s round of Ranji Trophy matches, will play the next round," he added.

However, as per latest reports, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli are set to play the next round for Karnataka and Delhi respectively.