Veteran India opener Shikhar Dhawan has expressed his admiration for the young players for playing a fearless brand of cricket with some innovative shots in their arsenal. With the rise of Shubman Gill and Team India entering the transitional phase, Dhawan has struggled to find his place in the ODI team. However, the southpaw always praises the youngsters for their approach and style of play.
Dhawan, who is known for his cool and calm demeanour, talked about the young players and how they come up with new strategies as he feels that it is important to adapt with the time as change is the only constant thing.
“It’s really good to see. Change is the only constant thing in life. You have to adapt with time. It is lovely to see how players have come up with new strategies and new ways of thinking,” Dhawan told ICC.
Dhawan last played for India in December last year after that India decided to give a long rope to youngster Shubman Gill to open alongside Rohit Sharma and picked Ishan Kishan as the backup opener.
With the emergence of T20 cricket, the young players have come up with some innovative shots to get the better of the bowlers and Dhawan praised them for trying something new on the field.
“Even like… we’ve been playing for such a long time, we get so inspired by all the young players when they come up with some new shots, and personally I ask ‘how you played that?’”
The southpaw recalled asking Suryakumar Yadav about how he plays the outrageous shots in the middle.
“I was asking SKY, he hits that six and I asked him ‘What do you do, man?’. So he was like, ‘I just bend and I do this’. I said I am going to try that in the nets as well because the more tools you can carry, it gets easier and it’s a wonderful mindset,” he added.
Dhawan also pointed out that the players of his generation were trained to play the grounded shots but that is not the case with the current crop of players as they play a fearless brand of cricket which is amazing.
“The thought process is getting broader. Earlier our coaches used to tell us to play down the ground, you don’t have to play big shots. So, we were raised with that sort of mindset but now when you see a youngster coming in, they will just go and express themselves. So, again, the main point is when I see the younger generation, they express themselves fearlessly. Where else, we also express ourselves but we had that thing because we were mentally trained that we have to play more on the ground but the new generation, they play and they express themselves very nicely and they don’t feel that guilt as well that ‘I got out this way or that way’, so I feel that is the biggest change we have seen and it’s amazing,” he added.
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