Getting a spot in the national side and donning the national jersey is a matter of huge pride. The competition these days is so high that there’s a constant pressure on the player to perform consistently to maintain his place in the side. But we have seen instances where players were dropped from the squad after playing a marquee innings in the previous match. So in this article lets discuss five such players who were dropped from the side even after a big score in the previous match.
The first name in the list is of Geoffrey Boycott. Geoffrey was arguably one of the finest batsmen that England have ever had and his career stats reflect why he was such an important member of the Three Lions during his era. In the 1967 test series against India, Boycott scored a stunning double century in 555 deliveries and made sure England won the match by six wickets. Owing to his slow innings, the media went down hard on him, which forced the selectors to drop him from the playing XI in the next match, making him one of the firsts to be dropped after playing a big inning.
The second name in the list is of Indian batsman Karun Nair. The right-hander made a forgettable start to his Test career with a couple of failures but little did England know that their misery was not over in India on their tour in 2016-17, as Nair roared into form in the Chennai Test. He scored a stunning triple hundred and silenced the critics in utter fashion. Surprisingly, Nair was benched for the one-off Test match against Bangladesh which followed soon after, making way for Ajinkya Rahane, who had missed the Chennai Test and being the more experienced player of the squad was given a nod in spite of Nair’s epic run fest in the previous match.
The third name in the list is of Kevin Pietersen. Kevin was on of the most technically sound batsman of his era and was a classic mixture of temperament and style. In 2012, he scored a flawless 149-run knock against South Africa at Headingley, but an ugly incident outside the cricket field was enough to make him sit out in the following Test match. Following the test he was allegedly involved in sending some ill mannered texts about his then captain Andrew Strauss for which he was asked to apologise and was dropped from the team in the next match.
The fourth name in the list is of Jason Gillespie. The tall fast bowler was a regular in the squad until he was dropped from the starting XI after the third Test of the historic 2005 Ashes series but was surprisingly included in the Australian squad against Bangladesh. In the second test at Chittagong, Jason scored a brilliant and unexpected double century and created news overnight. It became so obvious that he would not be included in the next series that Gillespie went on to say that, “I got Man of the Match and the Series with eight wickets at 11 and a double-hundred and won’t play the next Test … it will be a good trivia question.”
The fifth and the last name in the list is of Aravinda de Silva. Sri Lankan batting legend and World Cup winner de Silva, made headlines when he scored a blistering double-ton which saw Sri Lanka thrash newbies Bangladesh by 506 runs. Surprisingly, he was dropped from the side in the next match which infuriated him to a huge extent. He went on to announce his retirement in the shock of his dropping from the squad and thus it proved to be the final innings of his illustrious cricketing career.
