Why Ashwin not Included in WTC 2023 Final Squad: Right after the announcement of India playing 11 for the World Test Championship 2023 final game, the exclusion of Ashwin from the Indian squad made a stir among the cricket community.
Why Ashwin not Included in WTC 2023 Final Squad
World Test Championship 2023 final is scheduled to play from June 7 to 11 in Kennington Oval, London between India and Australia.
Overcast conditions and a hint of green on the wicket persuaded India to bowl first after winning the toss, and the strategy seemed sensible given the selection of a fourth fast bowler instead of the world’s top-ranked Test bowler – spinner Ravichandran Ashwin.
With Australia 76/3 at one stage it looked as if India’s selection could be the right one. But an unbroken 251-run stand between Head and Smith helped Australia to 327/3 at the close, leaving India on the back foot in the game.
Paras Mhambrey has backed Indian bowlers who failed to make an impact on the first day of the WTC 2023 final and explained the reason for the exclusion from the India squad.
Indian bowling coach Paras Mhambrey said “It’s always a very difficult decision to drop a champion bowler like that. But I thought looking at the conditions in the morning, having the additional seamer would definitely be beneficial. And it also has worked in the past. If you look at the earlier games that we’ve played, the last Test match, we went in with four seamers which did really well”.
“In terms of the bowling, I thought we could have been more disciplined, definitely. I thought we started off very well for the first 12-15 overs when we really bowled in the right areas. But maybe after a little bit, I thought we kind of weren’t disciplined about our bowling. And that’s one of the reasons I thought we conceded more runs than we ideally would have preferred”, he added.
Before the Day 2 lunch break, Australia scored 422 runs for 7 wickets loss. Siraj, Shami and Thakur each bagged 2 wickets while Umesh Yadav and Jadeja remain wicketless.
