The Indian skipper, Virat Kohli was heavily criticized on social media after he announced the team changes at the toss for the fourth Test match at the Oval. Indian ace spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, who hasn’t made a single appearance in the ongoing series, was expected to make it to the playing XI for the fourth Test match, however, he was benched again.
A lot was said, a lot was written, several fans, experts, and cricketers were against his decision of not including Ravi Ashwin in the playing XI. There were many who predicted that the Indian skipper will regret his decision as India will feel the absence of Ashwin on the final day of the 4th Test.
However, Virat Kohli won the battle against critics as at the end of the day his changes turned out to be perfect. Umesh Yadav and Shardul Thakur, who was included in the team’s playing XI replacing Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma gave amazing performances and justified the faith shown by the skipper.
While Shardul stole the show both with the bat and ball, on the other hand, Umesh Yadav was terrific with the ball as he picked crucial wickets for India.
In fact, later after the match Virat Kohli too cleared that any decision that the team makes is a collective one and they don’t pay attention to the ‘noise’ at all. His thoughts were now backed by many pundits and cricketers, including his good friend and RCB teammate AB de Villiers, who posted a beautiful tweet for the skipper. (read here)
Among many, Mikkhail Vaswani, a popular Television broadcaster also took to his Twitter and lauded the decisions made by Virat Kohli. He also praised Umesh Yadav and Shardul Thakur for justifying the faith shown by the captain. He wrote:
“Kohli made two inclusions #Shardulthakur & #umeshyadav in this game and one big exclusion. #ashwin . His boys justified the faith shown by their captian and rose to the occasion #ViratKohli stands vindicated with his team selection. Great job skipper #INDvENG #ENGvIND”
Here, check out the Tweet:
Kohli made two inclusions #Shardulthakur & #umeshyadav in this game and one big exclusion. #ashwin . His boys justified the faith shown by their captian and rose to the occassion
#ViratKohli stands vindicated with his team selection. Great job skipper #INDvENG #ENGvIND— Mikkhail Vaswani (@MikkhailVaswani) September 6, 2021
