'He walked the talk': Sunil Gavaskar lauds R Ashwin for silencing 'perennial complainers'

India vs England: Sunil Gavaskar has explained how R Ashwin's 106-run knock has certainly silenced all the ‘perennial’ critics of Indian cricket.

Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar lauded the innings of Ravichandran Ashwin on the third day of the second Chennai Test against England. The senior off-spinner peeled off an outstanding hundred, helping India set a mammoth 482-run target for England to chase with two days remaining.

R Ashwin registered his 5th Test century. (BCCI)

Gavaskar explained how Ashwin's 106-run knock has certainly silenced all the ‘perennial’ critics of Indian cricket and showed the way to bat on the spinner-friendly Chepauk track which was called a ‘beach’ and ‘unplayable’ surface by several cricket experts.

“This was a fabulous innings, this was where he walked the talk. Yesterday at the media conference, he was asked about the pitch and he said it was like a seaming pitch. 'All you got to do is show a little bit of patience, get used to the pitch and then start scoring runs'. That's exactly what he showed,” Gavaskar told India Today.

“He showed that on this pitch, you can stay, you can score runs and it is not what all these other people are making it out to be. The perennial complainers and the perennial guys who are always criticising Indian cricket. We have known them for such a long time and he has proven all of them wrong because if the pitch was that bad, how did India score that many runs more than twice what England did in the first innings.”

Ashwin clocked over a strike rate of 70 and slammed 14 boundaries and a six during his stint at the crease. His crucial 96-run partnership with captain Virat Kohli was the best example to explain how to bat in difficult conditions in Chennai.

“His performance was amazing. And he just gets better with the ball. You can see the way he is lining up batsmen, setting the batsmen. Most importantly, he is giving this Indian batting a lot of confidence,” Gavaskar said.

At the end of third day’s play, England's score read 53/3 with skipper Joe Root and Dan Lawrence still unbeaten on 2 and 19 runs respectively. England require 429 runs to win, while India are seven strikes away from levelling the series 1-1.