'What's this rubbish': Former coach reveals an episode when Ravi Shastri summoned players

Ravi Shastri has taken Team India to many highs when he was the team's head coach. Ravi Shastri had created an environment in the team and also changed Team India's nature of playing cricket. During his tenure Team India's bowlers became one of the team's key match winners with their match winning performances on the overseas tours. 

R Sridhar who was Team India's fielding coach during Ravi Shastri's tenure has opened up on many unheard cases that happened in the Team India's dressing room. 

In his book 'Coaching Beyond: My time with the Indian team' Sridhar has mentioned an incident from Team India's 2018 tour of South Africa when Jasprit Bumrah had started his Test career. In the first Test at Newlands coach Ravi Shastri had become furious at Team India's performance especially on the bowlers. 

Shastri asked: 'What's this rubbish?' 

According to Sridhar's book Shastri said, "We were in South Africa in early 2018, for the first Test in Cape Town. Within half an hour of the start of the game, Bhuvneshwar reduced them to 12/3, dismissing Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram and Hashim Amla. Then we bowled like millionaires and they ended up making 286. That evening, Ravi summoned the pace attack (Bhuvi, Shami, Bumrah and Hardik) and thundered, 'What's this rubbish? I have seen so much driving in the middle that I am sick of it. From this point on, whatever driving happens must be only on the road. No bloody half-volleys, get stuck into them'". 

Team India had removed three South African batsmen early courtesy Bhuvneshwar Kumar but from then on partnership between AB de Villiers and captain Faf du Plesis took South Africa out of danger. Though Shastri's warning in the first innings turned out to be a blessing for Indian bowlers and they reduced South Africa to 130 in the second innings. Team India lost that match by 72 runs but this was the beginning of a new era in Indian cricket where the bowlers had become Team's heroes in the overseas wins. 

We had seen the same approach in the further series as well, be it Australia, New Zealand, England or South Africa, the opponent batsmen had started to fear the Indian bowlers.

The most famous case was of Jasprit Bumrah and James Anderson on Team India's 2021 tour of England where Anderson was nearly rattled by the bouncers bowled by Bumrah.