The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) has brushed apart Prithvi Shaw’s emotional outburst after his exclusion from the Vijay Hazare Trophy squad, asserting that the temperamental batsman has flouted disciplinary norms repeatedly and is “his own enemy”. A senior official of the MCA, whereas speaking to PTI, claimed that the aspect was at instances “forced to hide” him on the sphere as a result of his poor health, self-discipline and perspective. Shaw had expressed his frustration at not being picked within the 16-member squad for the Vijay Hazare Trophy in a viral social media publish a couple of days in the past after being part of the aspect’s title-winning Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy marketing campaign.
“In the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, we were playing with 10 fielders as we were forced to hide Prithvi Shaw. The ball would pass near him and he would barely be able to get to it,” the official stated on circumstances of anonymity.
“Even while batting, we could see he was troubled reaching to the ball. His fitness, discipline and attitude are poor and it is pretty simple, there cannot be different rules for different players,” he claimed.
“Even the seniors in the team have started complaining about his attitude now,” he added.
During the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Shaw missed coaching classes repeatedly after displaying up on the group resort at “six in the morning” being out for many of the evening.
The teen has defended himself by saying Shaw, who has attracted quite a lot of consideration for his off-field actions and never doing his expertise justice by specializing in his sport, wouldn’t get any favor from such social media posts, the official stated.
“You would be wrong to think such posts on social media would have any impact on the Mumbai selectors and the MCA,” he added.
Shaw’s teammate and Mumbai captain Shreyas Iyer too had issued a stern assertion on the evening Mumbai defeated Madhya Pradesh within the remaining to win the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
“He needs to get his work ethics right. And if he does that, (the) sky’s the limit for him,” Iyer informed reporters in Bengaluru.
“We can’t babysit anyone, right? He has played so much of cricket. Everyone has given him inputs. At the end of the day, it’s his job to figure out things for himself. And he has also done it in the past. “It’s not that he hasn’t,” he added.
Shaw was earlier left out of Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy squad for similar reasons in October after which he was given a specific fitness program to work on at the MCA Academy.
“He is just not following that as effectively correctly,” the official said.
Shaw broke into the scene amid a lot of hype, making his Test debut in 2018 as an 18-year-old in a home series against the West Indies.
His lone century in the format was on that exciting debut but since then, he has appeared in just four more Tests, the last of these being against Australia four years ago.
His ODI and T20 International career has also failed to take off and he hasn’t played any white-ball cricket for India since 2021. These are markedly underwhelming statistics for a player, who was touted as the next big thing in Indian cricket just a a few years ago.
Several former players have expressed their concern about his antics and attitude both on and off the field. A recent low for him was failing to find any takers in the IPL auction despite coming in with a relatively low base price of Rs 75 lakh.
“I’ll let you know one factor. No one is Shaw’s enemy. He is his personal enemy,” the MCA official said, voicing the frustration that the cricket fraternity in India has felt over him not dwelling as much as the early promise.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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