Former English Captain ‘Ridicules’ Team India For R Ashwin's Omission From Edgbaston Test

Former England captain Michael Vaughan has criticised Team India for not including Ravichandran Ashwin in the playing eleven for the ongoing one-off Test in Edgbaston. 

Team India decided to go with a four-man pace attack comprising Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, and Shardul Thakur. At the same time, all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja has made the cut as the lone spinner in India's playing eleven. 

Just an hour after the Test started, a furious Vaughan took to Twitter to express his disappointment on Ashwin's omission from India's playing XI and captioned the tweet as, "No @ashwinravi99 !!!! Ridiculous .. #ENGvIND."

Ashwin's exclusion from the team was indisputably a surprise to many, keeping the current conditions in England in mind. While the pitches in England last season were generally green and offered a considerable amount of help to the seamers, they have functioned contrarily this year. 

English left-arm spinner Jack Leach bagging a 10-wicket haul in the final Test of the recently concluded three-match Test against New Zealand indicates how English conditions have behaved differently this year.  

In the ongoing Test, England captain Ben Stokes won the toss and opted to bowl first. However, as James Anderson struck early in the first session, India lost both their openers – Shubman Gill (17) and Cheteshwar Pujara (13). The match has been stopped due to rain, with the scorecard reading 53/2 in 20.1 overs. 

Earlier, senior paceman Jasprit Bumrah was named as the skipper for the ongoing Test after regular skipper Rohit Sharma failed to recover from COVID-19 on time. India currently leads the series 2-1 after winning the Tests at the Lord's and Oval while England had won at Headingley.