Of all qualities that we have come to associate with Sunil Gavaskar, being subtle, on the field or off it, is not one.
He says what goes on in his mind; sometimes even with a lot of risks, and his new opinion piece for The Hindu makes that abundantly clear.
To give you a perspective on why his article is being deemed controversial, I must mention one important fact: That even before India went to Australia for the tour, it was announced that Virat Kohli will come back for the birth of his first child.
People had a lot of opinions on the same, but it came down to the Indian captain’s choice. Challenging that notion, Gavaskar writes that while Virat gets to go back, another cricketer, T Natarajan, had a daughter during IPL playoffs and hasn’t seen her since then.
The left-arm yorker specialist who made an impressive debut in the T20 and had Hardik Pandya gallantly offering to share the man of the T20 series prize with him had become a father for the first time even as the IPL playoffs were going on. He was taken to Australia directly from UAE.
Looking at his brilliant performances, he was asked to stay on for the Test series but not as a part of the team but as a net bowler. Imagine that…and there is the captain going back after the first Test for the birth of his first child.
Gavaskar also pointed out how R Ashwin pays for his ‘forthrightness’ in the meetings where ‘most others just nod even if they don’t agree’.
Any other country would welcome a bowler who has more than 350 Test wickets and not to forget four Test match centuries, too. However, if Ashwin doesn’t take heaps of wickets in one game he is invariably sidelined for the next one. That does not happen to established batsmen…for Ashwin the rules seem to be different.
It’s been 3 days since Gavaskar’s write-up went online but today, it started trending on Twitter and has become a matter of discussion across the country. Here are some opinions which you may want to read.