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Prithvi Shaw was reportedly left out of Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy squad for the third group stage match against Tripura due to fitness and discipline-related issues.
Sunil Gavaskar defends Prithvi Shaw. (Picture Credit: Sportzpics, PTI)
Former India U-19 World Cup-winning team captain Prithvi Shaw was dropped from Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy team last week for the ongoing match against Tripura in Agartala. It was reported that the 24-year-old batter was left out of the squad due to fitness and discipline-related issues.
The Indian Express reported that the right-handed batter, who last played for India in 2021, was asked by the Mumbai Cricket Association selectors to follow two weeks of a fitness programme prepared by MCA trainers. The team management had informed MCA that Shaw’s body contains 35 percent fat and he needs rigorous training before he gets back into the side.
Reacting to the reports of Shaw losing place in the side, former India captain and legendary batter Sunil Gavaskar, in his latest column for Mid-Day, defended Shaw and said that waist size isn’t the only indicator of cricketing fitness.
“There have been mixed reports about his omission from the Ranji team. If it’s about his attitude, approach, and discipline, then it’s understandable, but hopefully it is nothing to do with his weight, as one report seems to have suggested,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.
“That report suggested that he had 35 percent more body fat. We have seen in the previous Test in Bengaluru how another player, Sarfaraz Khan, whose weight and shape have also been discussed in the public domain, played a scintillating innings of 150, showing that it is not the shape or the size of your waist that determines cricket fitness,” Gavaskar added.
“It’s whether you can score 150 plus runs and that too bat for a whole day or bowl 20 plus overs in a day. That should be the only criteria of a player’s fitness. By the way, how many players with zero percent or minimal body fat have scored 379 like Prithvi Shaw? I rest my case about fitness,” Gavaskar remarked.
Shaw, who struggled to score big runs in the first two matches of Ranji Trophy 2024-25 for Mumbai against Baroda and Maharashtra, hammered 379 runs for the most successful team in Ranji history during the 2022-23 season match against Assam.