For me, it was always colleagues: Ravi Shastri reacts to Ravichandran Ashwin’s ‘teammates are colleagues’ remark

Ravichandran Ashwin recently spoke to this newspaper and said that nowadays in the Indian squad setup, the team members are all colleagues rather than friends which is unlike the comraderie shared the cricketers from yesteryears. Former India coach Ravi Shastri in an interview with The Week weighed in on the discussion.
“For me, it was always colleagues. You will have buddies who are colleagues. I mean how many close friends do anyone have? If you go and ask anyone, they will probably say 4-5 in their life! I’m happy with 5 close friends in my life, I don’t want more than that. What I’m saying is, all the time colleagues. Commentary box, colleagues,” Shastri said.
“Once upon a time when cricket was played, all your teammates were friends. Now, they are colleagues. There’s a big difference, because here people are there to advance themselves and to stride ahead of another person sitting to your right or left. So, nobody’s got the time to say, ‘okay, boss what are you up to’?” Ashwin had said in an interview after he was snubbed from the World Test Championship final against Australia, a match which India went on to lose 209 runs.
Meanwhile, despite the snub, Ashwin has maintained the top spot among bowlers in the ICC Test rankingswhich were released on Wednesday.
Ashwin remained the world No 1 bowler with 860 points, followed England’s James Anderson at second with 829 points.