Venkatesh Prasad, the former India pacer, who is famous for his send-off to Aamir Sohail during the iconic India-Pakistan 1996 World Cup clash made the headlines in the past couple of weeks for slamming KL Rahul repeatedly over his poor form in Test cricket. In several long threads on Twitter, Prasad not just slammed Rahul for having a poor record in the longest format despite playing for eight years, but he launched attacks on captain Rohit Sharma, coach Rahul Dravid and accused selectors of favouritism.
Prasad had even gotten into an altercation with the former India batter Aakash Chopra, who defended Rahul. The spat got really ugly before Rahul’s father-in-law and Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty got involved into it. The debate finally died down when Prasad refused to talk to Chopra in a one-on-one interview saying that he had made his point. As it turned out, Rahul lost his post of vice-captaincy for the last two Tests and now a place in the third Test in Indore when Team India announced their playing XI on Wednesday, March 1.
On the eve of the third Test, skipper Rohit said that they would back players with potential and give them enough time to find their rhythm back while speaking on the selectors’ call to strip Rahul off as vice-captain. However, the backing from Rohit and Dravid didn’t seem to matter a lot as Rahul was dropped and Shubman Gill, who has been in terrific form across all formats came into the side after being benched in the first two games.
As for the game, India won the toss and chose to bat, however, apart from the luck skipper Rohit had on the first ball from Mitchell Starc, the hosts didn’t have a great start as they lost half their side in the first hour with just 45 runs on the board.
India’s playing XI: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, KS Bharat (wk), Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj
