Former England pacer Darren Gough on Saturday (February 27) drew parallels between the mindset of the current Indian team and the Australian side of the 1990s, saying Virat Kohli’s men know how to “get a team by the throat and win, win, win”.
India pulled off a stunning 2-1 Test series win in Australia last month after suffering an embarrassing loss in the first Test.
In the ongoing Test series against England at home, India copped a heavy 227-run defeat in the series opener but bounced back strongly to claim an unassailable 2-1 lead in the four-Test rubber.
“The mentality of this India now is like Australia in the 90s: get a team by the throat and win, win, win,” Gough told the PA news agency.
The Day-Night Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium finished inside two days with the hosts winning it by 10 wickets. England were bowled out for 112 and 81, while India scored 145 in the first innings before chasing a 49-run target without any hiccup.
Before this, India thrashed England by 317 runs in the second Test at Chepauk.
“This England team have been battered in back-to-back games now and it’s going to be very difficult to come back from that. You can imagine the mentality of some of the lads will be quite fragile,” Gough said.
According to him, white-ball cricket was given preference over Tests by the authorities in England, who decided to rest and rotate players throughout the series.
“If I was Joe Root, I’d be livid. I feel for him because I believe one-day cricket has taken a high preference this time, just as he was getting something together with this team. Eoin Morgan has got his preferences over the Test side,” he said.
“I know we are building towards the T20 World Cup in India but our main players are settled, they don’t need to play every 50-over or 20-over game.
“For the T20 series we should have gone in with some fringe players and seen who was ready to push for that squad.
“I really hope they can come away with a 2-2 draw, it would be a terrific result, but even then they’d be thinking ‘have we missed a chance here? What if we’d kept all our best players together?’.”
Ahmedabad will host the fourth and final Test, starting Thursday (March 4).
(With PTI inputs)
