The exclusion of Shreyas Iyer from India’s 2025 Asia Cup roster has angered cricket legends like AB de Villiers and other analysts from around the globe. On his YouTube channel, De Villiers expressed his opinions about Iyer’s incredible IPL and domestic cricket career in an Express. He described Iyer’s absence as ‘odd’, noting that it could be the result of internal politics or ‘ego conflicts’ The former Indian captain, Sunil Gavaskar, became irritable.
What did Sunil Gavaskar say?
In his recent column, he ranted against foreign opinions as ‘strictly none of their business.’ Gavaskar maintained that foreign cricketers, no matter how big or how often they have visited India, have no business speaking about Indian selection processes. ‘They must attend to the cricket of their country and let us Indians attend to ours,’ he asserted.
Gavaskar also pointed out a glaring double standard, while India is willy nilly criticized by the international experts, Indian retired players do not even fault other nations’ selection. ‘Have you ever heard Indian retired cricketers comment on the selection of other countries’ teams? No. We mind our own business,’ he stated.
Sunil Gavaskar on Indian Cricket Team
He also indicted the Indian media for seeking these outside opinions and giving them added traction, by looking for views from outside agents even those retired for decades the media can be unintentionally giving legitimacy to such feelings. Such analysis, Gavaskar asserts, is generally designed with social media clicks instead of sporting wisdom in mind. ‘One of the quickest ways of building numbers is through commenting on things Indian. negative by and large,’ he cautioned, suggesting that negativity receives vast response and reactions from Indian ‘keyboard warriors.’.
This installment is more concerned with wide issues of national pride, media accountability, and selection sensitivity of the team in the international cricket arena. As vigorously debated by fans in India, the incursion of external perspectives, albeit welcome has prompted a strong call to boundary by one of India’s all time greats. The issue now reverts to the cricket field, where India will try to answer critics through performance at the coming Asia Cup.
