Ambati Rayudu on the World Cup 2019 snub disaster: "Had they picked Ajinkya Rahane..."
In the 2019 ODI World Cup, the Board of Control for Cricket in India got plenty of criticism after Ambati Rayudu got snubbed while giving favour to Vijay Shankar. The reaction of Rayudu on social media to the news added more fuel to the fire, and after that, he never played for India again. After bringing an end to his cricketing career, Rayudu has finally opened up about the controversy, confirming that he had nothing personal against Shankar but couldn't understand the logic behind his selection as he was a player who batted at No. 6 or No. 7 and not No. 4.
In an interview, Rayudu said that he would've been content had the selectors picked someone like Ajinkya Rahane, a specialist batter in the middle order, and not Shankar, who was a player that belonged to a different category.
He said, "See if they would have picked someone like Rahane or any similar ilk of a player or someone who is experienced and senior, it would have been understandable. Everyone wants India to win. They have not picked me for whatever reason, which only they would know. But when you replace me with someone else, it should be helpful to the team as well. That is where I got angry. It was not about Vijay Shankar. What could he have done? He was playing cricket. Whatever the thinking behind it, I could not understand. I could not understand if they were playing a World Cup or a normal league match."
He further said that "team selection is not the work of one person. There are some people in team management; it may be because of them. Like there used to be one gentleman in Hyderabad. Maybe they didn't like me, or some incidents from the past may have caused them to look at me differently. So my career became like a cycle of these kinds of people showing up."