Former India player Aakash Chopra has said that Team India should acknowledge they no longer play spin well. He added that Team India might be better than other teams against spin on flat pitches but not on turning pitches as well. However, India suffered a 25-run defeat in the third Test against New Zealand in Mumbai on Sunday, November 3 as well. They also lost the series 0-3 after having already suffered defeats in the first two Tests in Bengaluru and Pune respectively as well.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel ‘Aakash Chopra’, he said, “It seems like we should admit that we cannot play spin, let’s be very, very honest. Let’s not beat around the bush that we can play. Let’s admit we do not play spin well. We can play on flat pitches, there is no doubt about that, but everyone can play on flat pitches. The only thing is that we play better than other teams on flat pitches,” he said.
“We also bowl better than the other teams because we win in quality vs quality. Since the opposition team’s spin is slightly weak, we destroy them on flat pitches, which we did against England. We do that job very easily but that’s not the case if it is a slightly turning pitch, like in Pune. There was slightly more help at Wankhede but even Mitchell Santner wasn’t there here,” he again shared.
In the same video, Aakash Chopra added that New Zealand didn’t have a great batting lineup and didn’t post massive totals in Pune and
Mumbai either as well.
“If we see the opposition team, they had three-and-a-half batters – Devon Conway, Rachin Ravindra, Will Young, and Tom Latham played just one knock in the entire series. Daryl Mitchell kept troubling but he too played just one big knock. They weren’t able to do it consistently together. It’s not that the opposition team scored 350-400 runs when the ball was turning. They did that only on a flat pitch,” he said.
“However, they too played better spin than us. Neither do we have confidence in defense nor control over our shots. We don’t have shots and are trying to find them, that we should play the sweep. We were practicing every day before the match but it is like learning a new language,” he concluded..
