IND vs WI: Pujara is being made “Scapegoat” says Gavaskar, India’s Test Squad for West Indies series: Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar has been left fuming with the BCCI’s decision to drop Cheteshwar Pujara from the upcoming two-match test series against West Indies. Gavaskar reckons Pujara is being made a “scapegoat” who has been left out of the squad while the other seniors have retained their places.
Following India’s loss at the World Test Championship (WTC) Final 2023, it was anticipated that the BCCI will take a few bold steps to tackle the issues. The performance of the senior players wasn’t encouraging and the reports indicated that BCCI might slowly begin phasing out these players as the new WTC cycle starts against West Indies.
Meanwhile, on Friday, the Indian cricket board released India’s ODI and Test squad for the tour of the West Indies, which begins on 12th July. While the squads had no surprising elements, Sunil Gavaskar wasn’t impressed with the only exclusion of Cheteshwar Pujara.
“Why has he been made the scapegoat for our batting failures?” said Sunil Gavaskar. “He has been a loyal servant of Indian cricket, a quiet and able achiever. But because he doesn’t have millions of followers on whatever platforms who would make a noise in case he gets dropped, you drop him? That is something beyond understanding.”
The renowned commentator further expresses his frustration that nowadays the selectors don’t do press conferences while announcing the squads which leaves no way to ask them questions about their decisions.
“What are the criteria for dropping him and keeping the others who failed? I don’t know because nowadays there is no media interaction with the selection committee chairman or whoever where you could actually ask these questions,” he said.
Gavaskar targetted the selectors for singling out Cheteshwar Pujara just on the basis of a few poor performances, while keeping the others intact in the team despite a string of low scores.
Team India’s batting had failed miserably against Australia in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) 2023 Final. Besides Ajinkya Rahane, no other batter could justify their role, however, it was only Pujara who got an axe from the side.
“Clearly only one man has been singled out while the others also failed. To me, the batting failed. Apart from Ajinkya Rahane, there was nobody who got any runs. So why Pujara has been made the fall guy is something the selectors need to explain,” he said.
Notably, before joining the Indian side for the WTC final, Pujara played a few games in the County Championship in which he slammed three centuries. However, his bat remained silent against Australia with scores of 14 and 27 in the two innings of the ultimate test.
Down below is IND vs WI Test squad for the upcoming two-match series.
IND vs WI: India’s Test Squad for West Indies series
Rohit Sharma (c), Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Ajinkya Rahane (vc), KS Bharat (wk), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishan Kishan (wk), Shardul Thakur, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohd. Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Axar Patel, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat.
For more details head to BCCI’s official website.
