Ravi Shastri defends Indian batsmen on charges of being 'selfish'

Ravi Shastri, the former Indian cricketer who is also the team director for India has defended the Indian batsmen against the charges of being selfish labelled upon them.

Shastri came down heavily upon the bowlers of the team after they had failed to defend scores of 309, 308 and 295 in the three consecutive matches in the Victoria Bitter ODI series in Australia.

Glenn Maxwell, the Australian batsman, called the Indian batsmen selfish and said that they were milestone driven. Only 67, 67 and 60 runs have been scored in the first three three matches in the series between overs 31 and 40 by India. In all the three matches, at least one of India’s batsmen has scored a hundred in these overs.

Indian skipper MS Dhoni had defended his players with a calm ‘no’ in front of the Australian media when he was asked about it. He said, "No, certainly not. I don't think so. Don't ask me to elaborate, the statistics are with you.”

Ravi Shastri, India’s team director, however, had a colourful answer. He said, "If they were focusing on milestones, Virat Kohli wouldn't have been the fastest to 7000 runs; he would have taken another 100 games. If that was the case, Rohit Sharma would not be having two double hundreds, and a score of 264."

Ravi Shastri commented upon Indian bowlers saying, "Finishing touch is important in better bowling, and being more consistent as a bowling unit. As MS mentioned, there were too many easy boundaries.

“It is not like the batsmen had to earn it, they were given. That should be eliminated. Even if you cut that by 60%, we will have tighter games. Those are the areas. Attention to basics. If we do that right, who knows.”

Shastri said that the bowlers need to learn fast. With the series already decided, Shastri said he wanted the bowlers to show him they had learned their lesson.

"What you want to see is the bowlers learning from what has happened in the first three games," he said.

"If that happens, that will be the biggest plus irrespective of the result. That is what I said last year when we played cricket in Australia. We might have lost the series 2-0, but deep inside I knew the way the boys played there was only going to be an improvement."