Former Indian chairman of selectors has slammed Shreyas Iyer and Gautam Gambhir for dropping Vaibhav Sooryavanshi from the playing XI for the fifth and final T20I against England, in Southampton.
Speaking exclusively on his YouTube channel, Srikkanth has expressed his disappointment over the treatment of the teen batting prodigy, who got only three chances in the XI before being dropped for Samson.
“You drop him (Sooryavanshi) for struggling against Archer. Who didn’t struggle against Archer in this team? I am very upset with the way they are treating him. This is not the way to groom a youngster. He should have been told that he wouldn’t be dropped for ten innings and just to play his game,” Srikkanth said on his YouTube channel.
“Actually Sooryavanshi should have played the two Ireland matches by resting Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson one game each. After seeing how he (Soryavanshi) played, he should have not played against England at all and played only the Zimbabwe series. Now they’ve mixed everything up and ruined the entire team,” he added.
Speaking at the post-series press conference, Indian captain Shreyas Iyer has revealed the reason behind dropping Sooryavashi from the XI, stating that the team management was looking for a right-left opening pair.
“As I mentioned, we wanted to try the combination that we felt would be best suited to these conditions. We also wanted a right-hander to open with Abhishek, and that was one of the major reasons,” Iyer said at the post-match press conference.
“As you saw, I was the only right-hander among the left-handers. We wanted to try a different combination that would suit this particular game. Sanju is a quality batsman, and he has won us many series in the past,” he added.
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