With the cramped cricket schedule hardly giving players an opportunity to breathe and relax, Team India head coach Ravi Shastri has emphasised the need of resting the players to preserve them.
The debate over whether the cricket schedule nowadays is gruesome has resurfaced after the likes of AB de Villiers and Shakib Al Hasan taking a sabbatical from the longest format of the game in order to prolong their career.
De Villiers, who has not played any Test since January 2016, recently made himself available for selection in all formats, while Shakib’s request for taking a break from the longest format of the game has been accepted by Bangladesh Cricket Board earlier this month.
And perhaps that is the reason behind Team India’s decision to give Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin an extended rest. The duo was rested for the limited-overs series in Sri Lanka and is not included in the team for the first three games of the upcoming five-match ODI series against Australia.
“You have a heck of a lot of cricket being played. You have about 25 Test matches being played in the next two years and a similar amount of One-Day games and T20I games,” he told India Today.
With Test series against South Africa, England and Australia scheduled to be played next year, the team management is not taking any chance with its best spinners.
“You want a guy operating in a mode in a particular format that is very good from the team point of view. If you look at No.1 and two bowlers in the world it is Ashwin and Jadeja [sic – No. 2 and No. 3]. If you start playing them across all formats, there will be a burnout,” Shastri said.
The World Cup is still two years away – there’s enough time to get back. They are known quantity. You have to preserve them for what you are looking for. The emphasis should be on Test match cricket as far as they are concerned. They can play across all three formats. How much you want to use a player – is a decision that has to be taken by the team management,” he added.