Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar has opined that Cheteshwar Pujara has been made a scapegoat by the selectors as the senior batsman was dropped from the team for the upcoming Test series against West Indies.
There were calls for changes to the Test team following the poor performance in the WTC final earlier this month. And while the selectors did not make wholesome changes to the team, they dropped Cheteshwar Pujara as well as Umesh Yadav. Both the players failed to make much of an impact in the WTC final.
Pujara managed to register modest scores of 14 and 27 in the crunch clash against Australia despite playing in county championship before the match. Gavaskar, however, believes that the right-handed batsman was made a scapegoat to hide the failures of other Indian top-order batters in Test cricket.
“Why has he been dropped? Why has he been made the scapegoat for our batting failures. He has been a loyal servant of Indian cricket. A loyal and quiet servant. A loyal and quiet achiever. But because he does not have millions of followers on platforms who will make a noise in case he gets dropped, you drop him.
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That is something beyond understanding. What is the criteria of dropping him and keeping the others who failed? I do not know because nowadays, there is no media interaction with the selection committee chairman,” Gavaskar said in an interview with Sports Today.
Sunil Gavaskar on Cheteshwar Pujara’s omission:
Speaking further, Sunil Gavaskar stated that the selectors will have to explain the reason behind dropping Cheteshwar Pujara. He pointed out that Pujara was not the only Indian batsman who failed to score big in the WTC final. India’s top four was blown away for just 71 runs in the first innings.
“He has been playing country cricket. So, he has played a lot of red-call cricket and he knows what it is about. Today, people can play till they are 39-40 years old and as long as you are producing runs, I do not think age should be a factor. Apart from (Ajinkya) Rahane, the batting completely failed. Why Pujara has been made the fall guy is something the selectors will have to explain,” he said.