News
Aakash Chopra opens up on India’s batting issues in BGT 2024-25
By SMCS - Jan 6, 2025 10:00 am
Views 6

Veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has said that Team India’s expected batting mainstays in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2024-25 let them down. He again said that Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, and Rishabh Pant didn’t do much between them. Notably, Australia beat India by six wickets in the final Test of the five-match series in Sydney on Sunday, January 5 as well. They also won the series 3-1 and booked their berth in the World Test Championship (WTC) final against South Africa as well.

Team India
Team India

In a video shared on his YouTube channel ‘Aakash Chopra’, he said, “There were four pillars for the building we were trying to build – Rohit, Kohli, Shubman and Pant because Yashasvi Jaiswal had gone for the first time, KL Rahul was dropped in the previous series and no one knew what Nitish Kumar Reddy would do. All four pillars have not done anything of note. If we talk about Virat Kohli, he scored a century in Perth’s second innings when the score was 275/2. It seemed like King Kohli, the old avatar, was back. After that, he had one score of 36 and there was nothing else. He kept getting out the same way. It just did not work out. So many times outside off.”

ALSO READ: “Shubman’s captaincy is very good” – Ravi Bishnoi on Shubman Gill

In the same video, Aakash Chopra also shared that Rohit Sharma faced a poor run with the bat.

Washington Sundar
Washington Sundar continues his form in Mumbai

“Rohit Sharma, who played five knocks, scored 31 runs in total. That’s not enough. You even opened two innings in that. When you went up, not only the batting order, but the entire team had to be changed. So that did not work at all,” he said. “Shubman Gill was looking decent when he was playing and then you dropped him. Then the two shots he played in the last match, it’s unbecoming of him. We all thought this would be the watershed event of his career,” Chopra added.

“If you leave the last match, you will have to include Pant as well as there were a lot of expectations from him. Rishabh Pant’s performance in the last match was incredible for sure, he scored more than 100 runs, including both innings, but the four pillars haven’t really managed anything,” he concluded.