India’s batting coach Vikram Rathour criticized the batting strategy by the visitors and said that India needed to find better ways to tackle the short balls. Under the captaincy of Jasprit Bumrah, India was bundled out for 245 runs in the second innings of the ongoing rescheduled Test at Edgbaston against England, despite dominating the proceedings on the first two days of the Test match. Rathour said that it was quite common for international teams to use short balls against Indian batters.
As per the quotes of India Today, Vikram Rathour said, “Yes, they used a short-ball plan against us in the field. We had to show a little better, not intent, but strategy. We could’ve handled it slightly differently. People tried to play shots but didn’t really convert or execute them well enough. They got out to that. We will have to rethink how we handle that next time in a similar situation, against similar bowlers who keep similar fields. We will need to have a better strategy against them.”
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This was not the first time that the Indian line-up failed to do much in a Test match. Earlier this year in the Cape Town Test against South Africa, the Indian batters had no answers against the Proteas bowlers and they eventually got bundled out for just 198 runs. Shreyas Iyer looked the most uncomfortable on the day, getting hurried, even at the pace of Stuart Broad.
Describing the same, Vikram Rathour said “Of course, at this level, you expect people to bowling short against us, and especially against the Indian team, people have been using the short ball for quite some time. People have their own ways of dealing with that. As a batsman, you have your own way to deal with that. We don’t really say you have to do this or do that.”
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He further elaborated, “As a batter, you need to decide, according to your game, what suits you in that situation and in those conditions. Unfortunately, today we couldn’t really execute whatever plans we had. Today was the day we were ahead. We should have actually batted better and put them out of the game with our batting. But unfortunately, we didn’t do that.”
India is on the back foot going into the final day of the Test match. Former English skipper, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow have been batting well and need just 119 runs to finish the game and chase down a record target of 378 runs at Edgbaston.
