Team India off-spinner said that World Test Championship final will feel like playing in Cricket World Cup to most of the players in the dressing room
India's star off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin hailed the team's work put in the last ten years in the longest format of the game and said that the side was reaping the rewards for the same by qualifying for the World Test Championship Final (WTC) final to be held in June this year.
Answering a DNA query in the post-match press conference on what does this qualification mean, the 'Man of the Series', Ashwin said, "I think it (WTC final qualification) is a result of the kind of work we've put over the last 10 years' span of time. The World Test Championship was announced and obviously, we have really fought hard. We've played 6-7 series and we've literally got most of the points, we've lost about three Tests in the entire cycle. Surprisingly enough, we had to still go into this series and garner points to get to the final and that's how it was positioned because of a lot of last-minute changes due to COVID-19."
After Australia's tour of South Africa was postponed due to COVID-19, New Zealand became the first team to qualify for the final. To reach the final, India had to win at least two games and not lose more than one to have their percentage of points (PCT) more than that of Australia. Winning the series 3-1 has meant India gained 90 points from the series against England and took their tally to 520 points out of the 720 contested, which took their PCT to 72.2 and with the help of the same they topped the points table as well.
Talking about the importance of the same to the players in the dressing room, especially to those who play just the one format like Ishant Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and himself, Ashwin said, "I think for a lot of players in that dressing room, it means a lot. Some of them have not even played in a Cricket World Cup (CWC), so it will mean like the CWC for most of them."
The 34-year old all-rounder also shared why he was particularly pleased for the tall pacer Ishant Sharma, who completed 100 games in the format. "I'm so very happy for someone like Ishant Sharma, who got selected in the 2015 Cricket World Cup and he couldn't play because he was ruled due to an injury towards the last minute. For someone like him to get to the World Test Championship final would mean the world and I was reading somewhere that he called it the World Cup final for himself, so it makes absolute sense."
Ashwin, who took 32 wickets in the series, including three five-wicket hauls and scored 189 runs including a century was named the 'Player of the series' after India beat England by an innings and 25 runs in the final Test to win the series 3-1.
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