“Free hand diya hua hai”: Ex-Pakistan star calls out BCCI’s approach towards Rohit and Virat

The ex-Pakistan star in question here is Basit Ali who believes that the BCCI should not give special treatment to Rohit and Virat and make them play domestic cricket

Former Pakistan cricketer Basit Ali has highlighted BCCI’s double standards towards star players Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. Notably, earlier this year, the BCCI had made it mandatory for all the players to participate in domestic cricket in order to get selected for the national team.

However, both Rohit and Virat have been given a free hand  to decide whether they want to play domestic cricket or not. This casual approach by the Board has led to both the star players losing their form in red-ball cricket which played a huge role in India’s 0-3 series whitewash to New Zealand on home soil.

Recently, Basit criticized the senior Indian batters on their form and mentioned how the youngsters have outperformed them.

“It was the mandate that you must make yourself available for domestic cricket to be eligible for India selection. Everyone played domestic, all of them performed in patches – Shubman Gill, Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal…but dono (Rohit and Virat) ko free hand diya hua that (both have been given free hand), that ‘you can exclude yourself’,” Basit said on his YouTube channel.

“Virat Kohli, out of touch, not in form at all. He needs to play domestic (cricket) before flying to Australia; Rohit also. Test-match pratice can’t be seen (in their batting),” Basit added.

Following the duo’s poor performances in the home season, questions have been raised on their place in the team, thus both of them seriously need to change their fortunes around in the upcoming Border-Gavaskar series, otherwise the situation would go from bad to worse for them and for the team.