Sunil Gavaskar offers take on Shreyas, Ishan losing BCCI contracts: ‘Nobody knows why Kishan not turned up’

Days after Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan were excluded from the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) central contracts, legendary Sunil Gavaskar has come out in support of under-fire Mumbai batter. Gavaskar sympathised with Iyer while issuing a statement on Kishan’s decision not to feature for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy.

Iyer and Kishan were made to pay, literally, for skipping Ranji Trophy action despite BCCI offering multiple warnings.

Gavaskar came out in defence of Iyer who played two Tests against England and only missed one fixture for Mumbai in the form of Ranji Trophy quarter-final.

“He did miss the quarter-finals, but that was also the time he had informed the team management of his inability to play the third Test match due to some pain in his back if he batted for some length of time. However, the trainers at the NCA certified that his markers were clean and they found him fit to play. That seemed to have gone against Iyer. Threshold of pain is an individual thing and no trainer can judge that,” Gavaskar wrote for Mid-Day.

However, Gavaskar found it odd that Kishan had gone off the radar completely and offered no reasons for missing cricket. The gloveman took a break in December, asking to be removed from India’s tour of South Africa. He missed all Ranji Trophy matches but returned to action recently in the DY Patil T20 tournament ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

“Nobody still knows why Kishan has not turned up for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy, while at the time of writing this column, Iyer was in the Mumbai team to play the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy. Iyer had also played in the Ranji Trophy game as asked by the Indian team management just before this Test series started, so it’s not as if he has refused to play the Ranji Trophy at all,” Gavaskar added.

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Iyer belonged to Grade B in the BCCI Central Contracts issued in 2022-23 and Kishan was in Grade C. They have dropped out of the list completely. However, they can make a return if they return to the national side and meet the threshold of minimum number of matches.