Former India cricketer turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra said that some of the veteran cricketers getting dropped will not hurt the team’s chances on overseas tours as well. His comments came as Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Wriddhiman Saha and Ishant Sharma have been dropped from the team for the upcoming Test series against Sri Lanka.

In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra responded: “I will not say that it is going to have an adverse effect, it is not going to happen. If one goes, the other comes. That’s the story of life. You have time to give the new players time. There will be an effect if you see from the viewpoint of confidence level although if we see Pujara and Rahane, they were not making runs when you went overseas – you went to England and South Africa, they haven’t scored a lot of runs.”

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However, Pujara averaged a below-par 32.42 and 20.66 in England and South Africa respectively as well. On the other hand, Ajinkya Rahane also had poor averages of 15.57 and 22.66 as well.

Aakash Chopra reasoned: “So a problem was there, you tried to find a solution to that problem and made some changes. I think you have done the changes at the right time because you are not going overseas currently, you are playing the majority of cricket in the subcontinent.”

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“You will play one Test match in England, but you have finished the other WTC series. So keep playing at home, give more chances to the young players and prepare them so that if you qualify for the WTC final, that’s also not a given, this time it’s going to be more difficult, your new boys will be ready,” Aakash Chopra concluded.