RAJKOT: India skipper Virat Kohli finally spoke out on the Karun Nair selection controversy, claiming that “it is not my place to comment”.Karun was excluded from the squad despite warming the bench throughout the five-Test series in England.
The Karnataka batsman admitted that he was not aware of the reasons for being omitted. That led to a huge controversy following which chief selector MSK Prasad had to come out and clarify about the situation.
“The selectors have already spoken about it, and it is not my place to comment. There are three guys doing the job of selecting the team, and the chief selector has already spoken to the player, from what I know. I don’t think I am in a place to comment about that as selection is not my job,” Kohli said on the eve of the series-opener. “People should also realise that it is not a joint thing everywhere.
That is the confusion right now, where people are combining everything and thinking that everything is happening from one place. That is not true,” Kohli added, trying to dismiss the perception the captain and the coach have a significant say in selection. The reality is that the selectors are tasked with picking the squad, while the playing XI is decided by the team management, which includes Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri.
Kohli also defended the move to rest pacers Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
“People usually talk about workload, but they don’t understand the concept of workload. They refer to workload as number of games played, which is not workload. If I get zero in a game, that is not workload. If I bat for six hours, that is workload,” the captain explained.