Sunil Gavaskar’s Honest Take On Shreyas, Ishan Losing BCCI Contracts: ‘Nobody Still Knows Why Kishan Not Turned Up’
Days after Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan were excluded from the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) list of central contracts, batting legend Sunil Gavaskar has come out in support of the underfire Mumbai batter.
Though Gavaskar sympathised with Iyer, the legendary cricketer issued a noteworthy statement about Kishan’s decision not to feature for the Jharkhand side in the Ranji Trophy.
Superstars KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Mohammed Siraj joined teammates Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Shami and Hardik Pandya in the A grade while veterans Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja retained their places in the top bracket of BCCI’s list of centrally-contracted players. Ignoring the directive to play the Ranji Trophy, premier batters Iyer and Kishan were not part of the 30-player list shared by the apex cricket for the 2023-2024 season.
Discussing the curious case of Iyer in his column for the Mid Day, Gavaskar pointed out that the Mumbai batter informed the team management about his inability to play the 3rd Test against England. Iyer was left out of India’s remaining three Test against England. The Mumbai batter had experienced back spasms in the build-up to the 3rd Test between the two teams. Iyer had also featured in the Ranji Trophy match before the start of the England Test series.
‘Shreyas Iyer did miss the quarter-finals but…’
“He did miss the quarter-finals, but that was also the time he had informed the team management of his inability to play the third Test match due to some pain in his back if he batted for some length of time. However, the trainers at the NCA certified that his markers were clean and they found him fit to play. That seemed to have gone against Iyer. Threshold of pain is an individual thing and no trainer can judge that,” Gavaskar wrote.
‘Nobody still knows why Kishan has not turned up’
Iyer’s former teammate and gloveman Kishan opted to take a break from competitive cricket for personal reasons during the South Africa series. However, Kishan recently made his return in the DY Patil T20 tournament ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Earlier, Iyer was given a Grade B by the BCCI while Kishan was slotted in the Grade C category.
“Nobody still knows why Kishan has not turned up for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy, while at the time of writing this column, Iyer was in the Mumbai team to play the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy. Iyer had also played in the Ranji Trophy game as asked by the Indian team management just before this Test series started, so it’s not as if he has refused to play the Ranji Trophy at all,” Gavaskar added.