Veteran Indian all-rounder R Ashwin has lashed out at a digital media company cum social media page for incomplete reporting based on a video from his YouTube channel where he talked about the Ashes and England's Bazball approach. While talking about England and Australia, Ashwin diverted from the topic a bit mentioning that the Indian Test team is soon set to go into transition and how the different culture and team structure won't allow them to adopt the Bazball approach of Ben Stokes and Co.
Soon, several media portals reported the same from Ashwin's video where he said that the players might get dropped if they fail for two Test matches attempting the Bazball way of playing. A social media page reported just the drop part without the context and Ashwin was quick to call them out on Twitter (X) itself.
"This sort of poor reporting is exactly what spews negativity. People won’t take the pain to see the video and spread around BS," Ashwin wrote. The social media page deleted the tweet after being called out by Ashwin himself for incomplete reportage.
What Ashwin actually said was, "We are playing Test cricket very well. But we will go through a transition soon. And things won’t be easy during that phase. There will be a few issues here and there. But let’s assume India adopts Bazball during this phase. Let us assume a player throws his bat at everything like Harry Brook and gets out and we lose two Test matches. What will we do? Will we back Bazball and the players?
“We will drop at least four players from our playing XI. That’s how our culture has always been. We can’t copy others' style of play just because it worked for them. It works for them because their management is fully in with this style of play, their selectors back the players to play this way. In fact, even their crowd and Test match-watching public are backing the team in this process. But we can’t do this," he further said.
Team India began their campaign in the World Test Championship (WTC) cycle 2023-25 with 1-0 win against the West Indies and will not play Test matches for almost five months before the South Africa tour in December-January.
