India’s coach Gurudev Ravi Shastri informed about how unfair it was for his team to reach the final of the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) due to the changed provision rules. Shastri additional said that his team had to ‘dig deep’ to get their place in the summit clash.
India was comfortably lead the points table in the WTC around October latter year. Still, ICC introduced a percentage system in November, as diverse tours got disturbed due to the COVID-19 situation.
As per the revised ranking, India fell to the third spot, and they had to secure series wins in Australia and England to safe their spot in the WTC final.
Ravi Shastri was disturbed with this ‘shifting of the goalpost’ by the ICC. But he accepted that the changed points system in the WTC came about because of the global pandemic outbreak.
“Please don’t shift the goalposts (On what advice he will give to the ICC for the next WTC). I’m sitting at home in November during COVID time. You have got more points than any other team in the world—360 at that time. Suddenly a week later, without playing cricket, there’s suddenly a rule that comes where they are going to go on the percentage system, where we went from no.1 to no.3 in a week. Fine, that’s because of countries not wanting teams to travel (because of COVID). All acceptable.” the former all-rounder said in a virtual press conference.
Although, Shastri said that India was feeling hard done by the immediate rule change, talk in this regard:
“I want to understand the logic behind this. I have two tours left, sitting on top of the table, leading by 60-70 points. They said you have to go to Australia and beat Australia. How many teams in 100 years or the last ten years have gone to Australia and beat Australia? We were sitting on top of the table with 360 points. With the percentage system, we had to go to Australia and beat Australia. If you don’t beat Australia and beat England 4-0, you get 500 points and still don’t qualify.”
"ICC World Test Championship Final, here we come" #TeamIndia share their emotions of reaching the ICC WTC Final & speak about the road which led to the summit clash, where they will face NZ 👌👌 – By @RajalArora @Paytm #INDvENG
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— BCCI (@BCCI) March 6, 2021
The Indian Ravi also said that their resources were developed, but his side managed to come out victorious.
“So we had to dig deep; we have had to go down every hole to find water. We found it, and we earned our right to be in the final of the WTC, the biggest trophy in the world, with 520 points,” concluded Ravi Shastri.
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