Ishant Sharma reveals no interest in playing English county cricket

Ishant Sharma

India’s most experienced seamer Ishant Sharma has revealed that he has no interest in committing himself for an English county. The 25-year-old’s remarks have come after his teammates Cheteshwar Pujara and Varun Aaron expressed their wish to play domestic tournament in the country.

When questioned whether he will be interested to play county cricket, the pacer replied: "No, I am not interested", in a promotional event relating bikes at New Delhi. A member of the organising team was refraining the player from answering cricket-related queries and thus he was not allowed to explain his stance further.

Pujara signed for a short stint with Derbyshire following India’s 1-3 Test series loss and Aaron is willing to engage himself provided his IPL commitments free him early next season to improve their respective games.

The bowler burst on to the international scene with a telling performance against Australia at Perth, 2008, consistently troubling the likes of Ricky Ponting. His match-winning spell of 7/74 at Lord’s in the recently concluded series is the best bowling figures for an Indian at the venue. When asked to choose a more satisfying spell, the bowler refused by saying "there can't be any comparisons between the two performances."

Expressing his disappointment on the series loss by going down in three consecutive Test matches after winning one, Ishant called England as the better side.

"No team wants to lose a contest. We played hard enough but they played better cricket than us," mentioned the Man-of-the-Match at Lord’s in India’s first win at the Home of Cricket since 1986.