Former India player Aakash Chopra has questioned why veteran Abhishek Nayar has been sacked as India’s assistant coach. He added that
Nayar should not be solely held responsible for the batting woes as established players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma also failed to step up. Notably, Nayar was appointed as one of India’s assistant coaches when Gautam Gambhir took over the reins from Rahul Dravid as the head coach. And, he has recently been relieved from national duty and has joined the KKR coaching staff in IPL 2025 as well.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel ‘Aakash Chopra’, he said, “Rohit Sharma has thanked Abhishek Nayar. He (Rohit) is appreciating and acknowledging him because he would have helped him. However, the Indian team (BCCI) have removed him from the coaching staff. Although even a year isn’t over, he is already sidelined, and he is now in KKR’s dugout.”
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“I ask a question. I am wondering if Virat Kohli was playing deliveries outside the off-stump, or Rohit Sharma wasn’t scoring runs, or there were a few batting collapses, and they weren’t able to play spin, was it only Abhishek Nayar’s mistake?” he added. “It cannot happen that six months ago, when they were under Rahul Dravid, with Vikram Rathour as the batting coach, everyone’s technique was fine, but suddenly, when Abhishek Nayar came, everyone’s technique became bad. We are talking about Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill.”
While talking about the recently announced BCCI central contracts, Aakash Chopra also stated that some people might be surprised why Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja, who no longer play all three formats, are placed in Grade A+ as well.
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“Another news was that the central contracts have been announced. Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan have made a comeback, which is actually good news. You might think that players who play all three formats should only be there in the A+ category. In principle, that is correct, and that will happen as well, but the announcement is made based on the retrospective year, the year that has passed. So all the names were three-format players at that time. Now they are not. So you will find that these players’ names won’t be there when the next list is announced,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
