Legendary batter Sunil Gavaskar slammed the Indian batters after they lost to Australia in the World Test Championship (WTC) Final at The Oval here, saying the batting from the Rohit Sharma-led side was in a shambles, especially in terms of shot selection.
It was a final that Australia dominated from the word go, posting 469 as Travis Head and Steve Smith made 163 and 121 respectively after being put into batting first, and bundled India out for 296, taking a first-innings lead of 173 runs.
After declaring their second innings at 270/8 to set an improbable 444-run target for India, Australia bowled out India for 234 to win by 209 runs before lunch on day five to earn their first-ever WTC title.
“In the first innings as well in the second innings. When Australia scored 469. The kind of batting line-up we often boast of, we should have got much closer to that. We gave Australia a big lead. It’s never easy to come back from there.”
“The batting was a shambles today. It was just ridiculous what we saw today. Especially the shot-making. We saw some ordinary shots yesterday from Pujara, somebody you never expect to play that shot. Maybe somebody has gone into his head and said ‘strike rate, strike rate’. You have not even lasted a session. 8 wickets have not lasted a session? C’mon,” said Gavaskar while talking to Star Sports after the match ended.
This was India’s second consecutive defeat in the WTC Finals after losing to New Zealand in 2021 at Southampton in the inaugural edition.
On Sunday, seamer Scott Boland paved the way for Australia’s win by taking out Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja in three balls to end up with 3-46, while Nathan Lyon was the pick of bowlers with 4-41.
Boland enticed Kohli to go after a full and wide delivery, which he couldn’t resist chasing. The thick edge on the big drive from Kohli flew was caught by Steve Smith at second slip with both hands after diving to his right, as scores of Indian fans fell silent. Gavaskar tore into Kohli for his poor shot selection, following which India collapsed.
“It was a bad shot. You should ask Kohli what shot he played. He talks so much about how to win a match, you need a long innings. How are you going to do that if you play a ball so far outside the off-stump?”
“It was a pretty ordinary shot outside the off stump. He was leaving till then. Maybe he was conscious that he needed one run to reach his half-century. It happens when you are nearing a milestone. It happened to Jadeja.”
“He played a delivery he shouldn’t have when he was on 48. Happened to Ajinkya Rahane who was on 46. He hadn’t played that shot all this while. Suddenly why do you play that shot? Because you are aware of that landmark,” he added.
Gavaskar had earlier said during his commentary stint on Day Five, “I do believe that batters when they know they are near a landmark tend to try and do something to get to that landmark so we saw that in the first innings with Jadeja. He was batting so well on 48 and he pushed his bat out when he thought he could run the ball down he was caught in the slips if he was not on 48 he might not even played that ball he might have left it.”
“And we saw Kohli chase a delivery outside the off-stump He showed so much discipline then he thought ‘oh! 1 run can get to another half-century’. Landmarks, milestones you chose the wrong balls to play the wrong shots because you want to get there. It happens so often.”
Gavaskar feels that with India set to start the 2023-25 WTC cycle with two matches against West Indies in July, the final loss to Australia could be forgotten quickly. “We are now going to play two matches against West Indies, who are not the best team in the world.”
“We have hammered them 2-0 or 3-0 and when you be in the final two years down the road, you could be playing Australia again (in the final) and make the same mistakes, then how you are expected to win the trophy?”
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