Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has criticized Joe Root for virtually throwing away his wicket in England’s second innings of the second Test against India as well. After losing the first Test by 28 runs, India set England a 399-run target to chase in Visakhapatnam. Root (16 off 10) was caught by Axar Patel at backward point off Ravichandran Ashwin’s bowling as the Indian Team won the game by 106 runs to level the five-match series.

In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Chopra said: “The English batters need to think about something. The shot Root played, if he hadn’t played that bad shot and Stokes hadn’t run like that, the runs would have been scored on the last day as well. It wasn’t easy to pick up 10 wickets here. Thank you so much, England guys. You did our job or else we wouldn’t have been able to get them out that easily. I think Root is selling himself really short. Ben Stokes, firstly, bats too low in the order, which is counterproductive. Secondly, the way he ran, that was lazy in capital letters.”

However, Ben Stokes, who scored a 29-ball 11, responded slightly late to Ben Foakes’ call for a single and he failed to reach the other end. Shreyas Iyer’s direct hit while running in from midwicket sent the England skipper into the pavilion.

“All batters from Rohit to Iyer to Pope to Root to Bairstow proved to be a letdown. When the conditions are so good for batting, you assume that runs will be scored. It was a very good pitch to bat. Even on the fourth day, there were no such cracks and the dust was not flying when the ball was pitching. It wasn’t a rank turner. Everyone got themselves out while playing shots,” Aakash Chopra concluded.