England defeated India by a narrow margin of 60 runs in the fourth Test at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton on Thursday which also helped them to take an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series. The all-rounder Moeen Ali did most of the damage as most of the Indian batsmen have surrendered in front of him as he returned with the overall figures of 134-9 as the visitors put up yet another disappointing batting display.
Unhappy with Team India’s performance, former Indian skipper Sunil Gavaskar has once again criticized the Indian batting line-up for another dismal showing in the series. Chasing a decent target of 245 runs to win, Virat Kohli once again led from the front in the fourth innings with a gritty half-century which was well supported by Ajinkya Rahane, which gave some hope for the visitors after losing three early wickets. But soon after Kohli’s dismissal, the batting-order collapsed like dominos.
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Talking about the same during the post-match show, Gavaskar said, “When you go in with five batsmen then you are bound to be in such a situation where you rely so much only on one player, Virat Kohli to get you the big hundreds. He can’t do it every time, he’s human. To expect that the lower order (to save India after the top-order collapse) after that Kohli-Rahane partnership was broken, to get even another 60-70 runs was too much.”
In this series so far, Virat has amassed as many as 544 runs, but the sad part is none of the Indian batsmen is not even near him as the second best Indian batsman is Cheteshwar Pujara with a tally of 241 runs. Apart from Pujara, Rahane is the only one to have surpassed the tally of 200 runs for India is the series so far. These batting deficiencies have cost India the series as if one more Indian batsman had stepped up and scored runs, then the 3-1 scoreline could’ve in India’s favor.
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Criticizing the same, Gavaskar said, “Here (in Southampton) I think their deficiencies were shown. Earlier (at Edgbaston and Lord’s) I think the ball was moving around quite a bit so most opening batsmen would have struggled. But here in both these innings, I don’t think that was the case.”
The legendary Indian batsman concluded by stating that he doesn’t consider Hardik Pandya as an all-rounder, who has failed more often than not in the series so far.
