Players should not pick or choose series as per their convenience, says Mohinder Amarnath

Former Indian batsman Mohinder Amarnath has given his opinion on how players of today’s generation are going against the spirit of the game by choosing when to play and when not to on their own terms.

Without naming anyone, he said that India must focus on their game and not let players to pick and choose series they want to play.

Amarnath’s statement is applicable not just to Indian players but to all players around the world. According to Amarnath, no player is bigger than the game.

He feels that players are dictating terms over their selection. ‘In such a situation, no player, however big an achiever, is larger than the game.

Nobody should be in a position to dictate terms regarding his selection without playing adequate domestic cricket. There is no player anywhere in the world who should be able to tell the team that he wants to choose his matches.

It would be an unhealthy trend to start, particularly when there are hundreds of cricketers across India who are toiling in domestic cricket,’ he opined.

While Amarnath did not name any player, he could possibly be talking about Indian captain Virat Kohli who recently skipped the T20 series against Bangladesh to travel to Bhutan with wife Anushka Sharma.

Or he could be talking about former captain MS Dhoni, who has taken a sabbatical after India’s exit from the 2019 World Cup at the hands of New Zealand.

Talking about the on-going three-match T20I series which began at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad today, Mohinder Amarnath said that West Indies cannot be taken lightly in the shortest format even in absence of Andre Russell.

‘This (T20s) is a format that the West Indians have excelled in, but they are without some of their big guns like Andre Russell. The format lends itself to surprise results and can be turned by one-star performance, so West Indies are very much a contender,‘ he opined.