India suffered their second home Test series whitewash in as many years as South Africa handed them a humiliating 408-run defeat in Guwahati on Wednesday (November 26).
After setting India a gigantic target of 549 on Day 4, the Proteas needed little more than a single session on the final day to bundle out the hosts and complete an emphatic victory.
Following the 2-0 debacle, legendary spinner Ravichandran Ashwin slammed the Indian batters’ inability to play spin and not trusting their defence.
India lost the opening Test in Kolkata by 30 runs, failing to chase a modest target of 124 on a crumbling surface. While the pitch served for the Guwahati Test was completely flat, Indian batters once again let the team down as their two innings folded for 201 and 140.
“It was absolutely shell-shocked pathetic batting. I have been saying this for the past 3-4 years that the players we have don’t attempt the sweep shot. When we lost in the New Zealand series, you would find that the New Zealand batters defended the ball by sweeping. Their defence wasn’t their defence. Rather, their sweep was their defence. If you give them two deliveries, they would defend once and try a sweep or a reverse sweep. And they practice and are very very good at it,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
“As a spinner who is encountering this, you need runs on the scoreboard. If you have 250-260 runs on the board, these sweeps can be blocked and you can even take a wicket with a good ball. If you are getting all out for 140, 150, 160 and you are behind in the game, you have to run to catch up. And when I say pathetic batting, there is no ability to trust the defence. Tristan Stubbs got out defending badly. But he played 400 balls in this Test series. Even if he had a bad defence, he was ready to back that. He didn’t have the greatest of defence but we didn’t have the ability to get past his defence. Eventually ended up making 94 runs.
“The fact of the matter is how are our batters playing good defence to make Simon Harmer earn his wickets? You tell me something, barring Rishabh Pant’s ball which bounced, how many of our batters actually had good defence? If there’s fault in your defence, you’ll play shots. Many a times, we are also at fault. When these batters take on spinners and keep on playing big shots, we keep on saying that’s the way to play, that’s his game. No bhaisaab, you have to play defence. All great cricketers have created their game around a solid defence. What is good batsmanship? Good batsmanship is mixing intent with defence. What is intent? When you can positively defend. I am harping on this that it is not about an individual I am talking about the failure to address our defence against spin. We are now probably one of the poorest spin-playing nations in the world,” he added.
While India’s white-ball side has performed exceptionally well under current head coach Gautam Gambhir, producing trophies and strong win-loss records, that success has not translated to the traditional format.
This was the second time in a span of just 12 months that India ended up being whitewashed in a home Test series. With Gambhir at the helm, the team has now lost five of the last seven home Tests, including a clean sweep against New Zealand last year.
