Ashwin, who runs a successful YouTube channel where he often shares interesting tidbits from the field and also discusses team previews for various competitions, has found himself under criticism after uploading a video where he grouped Ireland as an associate country. The off-spinner later changed the headline of the video to segregate Ireland from the other associate teams. He also clarified in response to a comment that the video was about the associates along with Ireland.

What happened?

Ashwin, who has not been picked for the T20 World Cup, uploaded the first of his preview series for the edition, featuring former India player Robin Uthappa and Prasanna Agoram, who was the analyst of the South African team in 2010. The video titled “T20 WC Curtain Raiser: Associates Watch” also included Ireland, a team that gained Full-Member status in 2017.

Along with clubbing Ireland alongside teams such as the Netherlands, Namibia and Scotland, Ashwin’s video has several other errors, which were pointed out by the viewers. Instead of an image of pacer Barry McCarthy in the “Associate player to watch out for” section, a picture of retired Ireland player Peter Chase was used. Craig Young was also mistakenly used instead of an image of Mark Adair.

The outcome

Ashwin later confirmed to some of the factual errors, admitting that the video had a wrong picture of Adair.

“It is associate nations and Ireland episode cos we couldn’t fit them into an episode," he said. “You will get why when you see the rest of the episodes. Yes we got “Mark Adairs” picture wrong at the back end. Appreciate your feedback.”

The headline of the video was later changed from just “Associates Watch” to “Associates & Ireland” watch but the video still has images of the Ireland players under a banner terming them as associate players.

The description of the video has not been changed either and currently says: “In the first episode, we weigh up about all the associate nations.”

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