Ahead of the upcoming third Test between India and England in Rajkot, former South Africa great AB de Villiers opened up on controversial saga in connection with Team India’s aggressive wicketkeeper-batsman Ishan Kishan.
As per De Villiers, he also found it challenging to manage his career with too much cricket in the modern era, especially with the growth of T20 leagues worldwide.
The former Mr 360 degree batsman pointed out that it’s only a human reaction as players choose to take a break. However, he was of the opinion that Test cricket remains the ultimate form of the game.
“Very interesting scenario there in India and I’ve been through this quite a bit throughout my career as well. It’s a very tricky situation. Players trying to manage their careers, and rightfully so, but the difficulty around this is that there are a lot of T20 leagues around the world, IPL, and it’s taking up a lot of attention of the player’s focus is on that,” said De Villiers on his official YouTube channel.
“Very difficult because the ultimate format of the game is still Test cricket and all Test-playing nations really wanna look after the Test format, so there’s a bit of force in all kinds of directions here. Guys, you do run out of energy, and once you run out of energy, you tend to go in your defensive mode and into a shell where you look after what you feel is important to you, and that’s a human reaction,” he added.
Notably, Ishan withdrew from India’s Test squad ahead of the two-match Test series in South Africa last year. Subsequently, he was also excluded from the India squad for the first two Tests against England. He then failed to find a place in the squad for the remaining three Tests.