cricket

Updated: Jun 06, 2020 09:21 IST

India head coach Ravi Shastri on Monday took a dig at media over reports of a rift between skipper Virat Kohli and his deputy Rohit Sharma. At the pre-departure press conference for West Indies tour in Mumbai, the Indian captain was questioned on the cryptic Instagram post by his wife Anushka Sharma, which reportedly added fuel to the fire, and was later deleted by the actress. But before Kohli could reply, the Indian coach stepped in and said: “Very soon you will hear wives batting and bowling.”

Shastri further went on to add that he has not any kind of “nonsense” in the Indian dressing room during his tenure as the Indian coach. “The way this team plays, no individual is bigger than the game. Not me, not him, nobody in the team. I have a been a part of that dressing room and none of the nonsense is there.”

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“You look at sheer consistency across all formats, it’s been magnificent. We live and we love. Even in the World Cup, we have played some outstanding cricket. If you look at the intensity, the consistency, it was great to see,” the former allrounder added.

Speaking about India’s performance in the recently concluded World Cup, Shastri said: “I was thoroughly impressed by what I saw from the dressing room. You live and you learn. We could have learned a lot in those 30 minutes at the start of the chase against New Zealand. That’s what we live for… If you look at 18 months, we have had a great ride in Test cricket, we have had a very good run in the ODIs as well.”

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“We are No 1 in Test cricket, we are No 2 in the one-day game and we are not that far in T20 cricket. You can’t ask for more. Yes, if we would have won the World Cup, that would have been icing on the cake but you can’t take away anything from the boys the way they have performed,” the coach signed off.