Chennai, Feb 16 (IANS) India off-spinner R Ashwin said on Tuesday that Indian cricketing fraternity needs to magnanimously deflect away criticism of Indian cricket pitches when it comes from overseas cricketers.
The off-spinner, who earned the man of the match award for his eight-wicket haul and a century on a wicket that aided turn from the first session of the first day, said the Indian team is proud of being able to master difficult conditions better than the others.
“Everyone is entitled to an opinion. It us who are reading into it… Whoever is giving their opinion is well within their rights to give an opinion. As a cricketing fraternity or country, dealing with such sort accusations needs to get better. We must hold pride in how we are playing better [on such wickets]. Test matches are won over a period of time. You play overs and win Test matches,” said Ashwin while speaking to the media on Tuesday.
“People give their opinions. It is completely fine if people give opinions. We will also have opinions when we tour abroad. We don’t complain or crib, and just get on with it. I have never seen any of our greats, be it our coach Ravi Shastri or Sunil Gavaskar who have been on tours abroad. I have never seen them talk about pitches having lot of grass. It has never happened. When people come out with such opinions, we should respect them but I think we should be able to magnanimously deflect them away,” he added.
England captain Joe Root said that while he wouldn’t say it was a good wicket, his team was totally outplayed and it provided an education for the England team.
“You can call it (the pitch) whatever you like. The fact of the matter is that we were outplayed on it. And as I mentioned the toss was an important one. Don’t think it necessarily dictated who is going to win the game. But we would have certainly liked to bat first. The thing that stands out — India made the most of the opportunity and we didn’t perform well enough in the first innings. We didn’t get close enough to it and apply enough pressure in that respect,” said Root.
“I wouldn’t say it was a good pitch but it made for very exciting cricket and it was not the reason we lost the game. We were outplayed in all three departments,” said the England skipper.
“For us, it’s a bit of an education. It was a surface that spun a huge amount and bounced more than we anticipated but we should take that as a learning and be better for it the next time we experience conditions that are similar,” Root added.
“It would have been closer once we took a cluster of wickets in the second innings. It might have changed the momentum of the game. We have to try and get better if we find ourselves on similar kinds of surfaces. As I said it is very alien to a lot of English guys, [they] would have not experienced [this] before,” the England captain said.
–IANS
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