Ahead of the fifth and the final Test against England, India’s head coach Ravi Shastri grabbed a lot of eyeballs when he rated the current Indian team as the best in the last 15-20 years. While former captains Sunil Gavaskar and Sourav Ganguly were among those who lashed out on Shastri for his comments, skipper Virat Kohli reckons that there is nothing wrong in believing so for a team.
During the post-match press conference at The Oval, a journalist asked Kohli “The Best Indian team in the last 15 years’. Do these tags put pressure on you? Do you actually believe you are?”, to which the skipper calmly replied, “We have to believe we are the best side. Why not?” The questioner threw in the second punch as he said “The best team in 15 years?” Kohli now seemed frustrated by the counter punch but controlled himself and threw in a counter-question: “What do you think” The reply was: “I am not sure.” And Kohli put the intense chat to bed with a fitting reply, as he said, “That’s your opinion. Thank you.”
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Going into the game, Shastri had asserted: “Nothing to take away (from England), the endeavor of this team is to travel well, compete and win. If you look at the last three years, we have won nine matches overseas and three series. I can’t see any other Indian team in the last 15-20 years that have had the same run in such a short time, and you have had some great players playing in those series.”
The comment didn’t go down well with Ganguly, who lashed out at Shastri and termed latter’s comments as “immature”.
During a show on India TV, Sourav said, “These are immature comments. Whichever generation is playing for India, be it Chetan Sharma’s or when I played for India or when Dhoni played or now when Virat is playing, we are all the ‘Indian Team’. We all just represent the team at different times. It is not necessary to compare one generation or the other. Virat Kohli and his players are working hard to perform for India; it would not be nice for me to say anything.”
Gavaskar echoed the sentiments and said that despite the fact that this Indian team is the only one to defeat Sri Lanka at their home, but there have been other Indian team who have won series in West Indies, in England, and for that matter some Test matches in Australia and South Africa as well
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Citing captaincy stint of Rahul Dravid, as quoted in India Today, Gavaskar said, “What I can say is that teams in the 1980s have won in England and West Indies. Rahul Dravid also won series in West Indies in 2005, in England in 2007 and captained when India beat South Africa for the first time (in South Africa). Dravid gets very little credit for his leadership and his team’s wins. There have been teams who have won overseas.”
Here is the video of the conversation:
