Indian cricket team captain Rohit Sharma has allegedly complained against legendary batter and commentator Sunil Gavaskar to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), according to a report by CricBlogger. The report claimed that Rohit felt that Gavaskar was “too negative” regarding his recent poor form against Australia and he relayed his concerns to the cricket board. Rohit scored just 31 runs in 3 Test matches against Australia and he even decided to drop himself for the final match in Sydney. In his column for the Sydney Morning Herald, Gavaskar wrote that Rohit would step down from captaincy “if he doesn’t score runs in Melbourne and Sydney and he won’t wait for the selectors to make that call”.
The report added that Rohit has allegedly expressed his ‘discomfort’ regarding the external pressure over his performances. “Rohit felt that it was not necessary for Gavaskar to criticise him in that fashion and that’s why he complained to the BCCI about Gavaskar,” a source said.
Rohit Sharma, along with his teammates Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer, will miss Mumbai’s upcoming Ranji Trophy clash against Meghalaya in a must-win clash starting on Thursday.
Ajinkya Rahane-led Mumbai are currently placed third, behind Jammu and Kashmir and Baroda, in Group A with 22 points in six matches. They suffered a five-wicket loss against J&K on Rohit’s return to domestic cricket.
The trio of Rohit, Jaiswal and Iyer will prepare for the upcoming ODI series against England starting on February 6 in Nagpur, four days after the scheduled end of the last Ranji Trophy round.
Rohit and Jaiswal, who also open together in Tests, partnered at the top for Mumbai in their previous Ranji Trophy match. Their return to domestic cricket followed the BCCI’s new guidelines mandating players to participate in domestic competitions. This directive came after India’s consecutive Test series defeats to New Zealand and Australia, which ended their hopes of making the third successive World Test Championship final, largely due to the batting unit’s struggles.
Rohit has been particularly out of form, scoring just 164 runs in his last 15 Test innings at an average of 10.93 this season. His struggles continued for Mumbai, where he managed just 3 and 28 against J&K. Jaiswal also had modest scores of 4 and 26 but had a better Test season, with a century and two half-centuries in Australia after scoring four fifties at home.
Iyer, in contrast, has been Mumbai’s standout performer this Ranji season, amassing 480 runs in seven innings at an average of 68.57, including two centuries. He also impressed in white-ball cricket, scoring two unbeaten hundreds in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and 345 runs at a strike rate of 188.52 during Mumbai’s victorious Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy campaign.
(With IANS inputs)
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