Former India off-spinner R. Ashwin has spoken candidly about the handling of senior players Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, emphasizing the need for knowledge transfer (KT) and transparent communication from the Indian cricket management.“On one side is selection, on the other side is Kohli and Rohit. These are two sides of the same coin. Upon examining the selection, it is clear that the selectors are moving forward,” he said on his Youtube channel. “However, in this process, they have two players who are nearing the end of their careers. One thing I would like to mention is that you need to improve the way you handle such players. “It is very easy to say they have grown old and should retire. One of the reasons we feel this way is that we see many young players in the IPL performing well, and we believe they can replace these experienced players. “However, during this process, one thing we often overlook is solid communication and knowledge transfer. I request that this be addressed in the future,” Ashwin said.Ashwin clarified that KT doesn’t mean teaching new shots. “Knowledge transfer, or KT, doesn’t mean Kohli and Rohit will be teaching Shubman Gill and Abhishek Sharma new shots; rather, it will show them how to handle pressure situations and deal with injuries. The way Kohli and Rohit batted in the 2023 ODI World Cup, they have nothing to prove, but does KT have any space? There is actually no space for KT in Indian cricket because there is no transition phase.”Ashwin cited the coaching example of Rahul Dravid and Gautam Gambhir to highlight the lack of structured transition. “Rahul Dravid was a coach at one time, then Gautam Gambhir took over. We did not have any template that, after Dravid, Gambhir would be the coach, so taking KT from Dravid was not possible. And after Gambhir, for whom will the KT go? If there is no roadmap from the management side, this cannot happen from the players’ side.”
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Do you believe that the Indian cricket management effectively communicates with senior players like Kohli and Rohit?
“I really hope the conversation has already taken place with Kohli and Rohit. But if it happened now, why didn’t it happen during their retirement from T20Is in the World Cup last year? Had they been told then, they would have said, ‘Okay, boss, do we want to play because this is what the team wants to take a direction and these are the choices?’ But this leaves a lot of uninformed space, which leads to speculation. And there shouldn’t be speculation. It should have been a straight conversation. If the communication is not clear and transparent, and if it is not done with a forward-looking vision, it leaves players in a very vulnerable position,” he said.
