‘Lekin apne desh mei toh yahi hota hai’ – Fans abuzz as Sunil Gavaskar drops strongly worded verdict against Cheteshwar Pujara snub in Indian Test Team

Sunil Gavaskar is not mincing his words these days. The same was on display again when he worded a strong appeal against the exclusion of Cheteshwar Pujara from the Indian Test Team for the series against West Indies. Notably, the Indian Cricket Board announced the Test and ODI squads for the upcoming multiformat tour of the West Indies and the USA. The tour, which starts on July 12, will feature two Tests, three ODIs and five T20Is.

Sunil Gavaskar was in conversation with India Today where he said, “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. That is something beyond understanding. What are the criteria for dropping him and keeping the others who failed? I do not know because nowadays, there is no media interaction with the selection committee chairman.”

Cheteshwar Pujara failed miserably in the WTC 2021-23 final against Australia

“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 added.

While Pujara was busy perfecting his skills in the red-ball game with a stint in County Cricket with Sussex, he could not make the most of his practice. The star batter, dubbed the ‘Modern-day Wall’ could only manage 14 off 25 and 27 off 47 in the respective innings while batting at number 3 for India. Ultimately, India lost their second consecutive final by a huge margin of 209 runs.

Here’s the full Test squad: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), KS Bharat (wicket-keeper), Ishan Kishan (wicket-keeper), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Axar Patel, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, Navdeep Saini.

Here’s how fans reacted: