Aakash Chopra plays down the existence of nepotism in cricket, cites Arjun Tendulkar’s example

Aakash Chopra, the former Indian batsman, reckons that nepotism doesn’t quite work out in the game of cricket. To start with, he named Rohan Gavaskar, the son of the legendary Sunil Gavaskar, as someone, who could never make it big. The southpaw played 11 ODIs for India, but could manage only 151 runs. The Uttar Pradesh-born didn’t make it to Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy team either.

Chopra reckons that Rohan donned the national jersey due to his performances for Bengal at the domestic circuit. Combining first-class, List A and T20 cricket, the left-handed batsman racked up 10,208 runs with 19 centuries and 53 half-centuries. Chopra said that despite having ‘Gavaskar’ as his surname, he couldn’t break into the Mumbai team.

“No mate! If you see the bigger picture, Sunil Gavaskar’s son was Rohan Gavaskar. Just because he was Sunil Gavaskar’s son he should have played lot of cricket, many ODIs and Test matches. But that did not happen,” Chopra was quoted as saying on his YouTube channel.

“And when he played for India, it was because he was consistently doing very well for Bengal. In fact, forget all that, he was even not playing his son in the Mumbai Ranji team. He was not getting a place in the Mumbai team even though he had the surname as Gavaskar,” he stated.

Arjun didn’t get an easy access to the Indian cricket team: Aakash Chopra

Chopra also cited Arjun Tendulkar’s journey thus far. Arjun made his India U19 debut in 2018 during a series against Sri Lanka. But he didn’t play the World Cup earlier this year in South Africa. Last year, he played in the Mumbai T20 League, but hasn’t made his way into his state team yet.

“You can say the same thing about Arjun Tendulkar. Because he is Tendulkar’s son, nothing was given to him on a platter. He didn’t get an easy access to the Indian cricket team. There were no such useless selections even in the India under-19 team,” Chopra added.

Moreover, Chopra put forth one incident when a son of an administrator was a captain of the state team despite not having enough potential. He said that in lower level cricket, nepotism might exist, but not at the highest level.