Former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar highlighted how the stand-in captain KL Rahul made a mistake against South African captain Dean Elgar in Johannesburg after the hosts leveled the ongoing three-match Test series by winning the second Test by 7 wickets on Thursday (January 6).
Elgar led South Africa from the front, playing an unbeaten knock of 96 runs to take the hosts over the line and deny another chance for India to record their first-ever Test series win in the rainbow nation.
The remarkable victory in Johannesburg helped South Africa level the three-match Test series at 1-1 with the third and final Test to be played on January 11 in Cape Town.
Hailing Elgar for his match-winning efforts, Gavaskar said that Rahul’s some of the captaincy decisions made helped the Proteas skipper in accumulating easy runs.
He further mentioned that Rahul had two fielders in the deep when Elgar was only looking to rotate the strike and take singles, and that’s where he went wrong, as the South African batter wasn't "one of the hookers of the ball".
Gavaskar said on Star Sports' post-match show: “This was the first time actually that India have lost a Test match in which Virat Kohli as captain has not played. On KL Rahul, I would say giving Dean Elgar those singles at the start of the second innings was making life a little bit easy for him.”
He continued, “Dean Elgar is not one of the hookers of the ball, so you have two men in the deep that do not make any sense. He was taking singles comfortably and scoring runs.”
The legendary batter also blamed Team India’s poor fielding for the defeat in the second Test in Johannesburg.
He signed off by saying, “Indian fielding also could have been just a little bit sharper. I think it's the South Africans who won the game and I don't think the Indians lost it.”
