Indian legendary batter Sunil Gavaskar slams Indian batters for their below-par show in the third Test against Australia, saying the “pitch played on their minds”.
Sunil Gavaskar Slams Indian Batters
During the Australia tour of India 2023, both teams are scheduled to play 4 Tests and 3 ODI. The 4 Test match will play a crucial role in India’s qualification for the grand WTC 2021-23 final.
Winning the toss India decides to bat first and struggled to make a partnership from the beginning. Gill and Kohli are the only players to cross the 20 runs mark in the first inning. The poor batting performance from the batters leads India to windup their first inning for just 109 runs.
Gavaskar also slammed Rohit for under-utilising Ashwin and putting more focus on the match-ups. India were dismissed for 109 and 163 on a surface that offered sharp turn and variable bounces. With the 9-run victory in the 3rd Test Australia qualifies for the WTC 2023 final match.
“Batters actually didn’t do justice to their talent. If you look at the Indian wickets, you will find it is the Indian batters who got themselves out, playing some shots anticipating that this is what the pitch is going to do,” Gavaskar told Star Sports.
“If you look there is lack of confidence because in the first two matches, they did not get runs, apart from Rohit Sharma, who got a lovely hundred in Nagpur. When you are short of runs, there is just that little tentativeness in their batting. And you can sense that they were feeling for the deliveries.
“They were not able to go down the pitch as much as they should have. They let the pitch overtake them. It was the pitch that actually started to play on their minds, even in the first innings but more so in the second innings,” he added.
Despite the loss, India still lead the four-match Test series 2-1 and have already retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
Gavaskar said India were 60-70 runs short in the first innings, after opting to bat first.
“The pitch started to talk in the first hour itself, so it wasn’t going to be easy but still if we had made 160-170 in the first innings that could have made the difference,” the batting great said.
The last Test match of the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2023 will be played on March 9 in Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.
