IND vs AUS: The Indians appeared frazzled on the first morning, apparently taken aback by the amount of turn on a mixed-clay pitch where selective watering had wreaked havoc.
Days after former India coach Ravi Shastri accused the team’s batsmen of being “a little complacent,” “a little overconfident,” and “overeager to dominate” during the team’s defeat in the third Test match against Australia last week in Indore, captain Rohit Sharma responded with an unusually forceful “That’s rubbish.”
On the eve of the fourth and final Test of the series, which begins in Ahmedabad on Thursday and which India leads 2-1, Sharma was responding to questions from reporters.
“Ravi himself has been in this changing room, so he is aware of the attitude we adopt while playing. It’s about being brutal and not being arrogant… Since you want to give it your all in all four games, it is absolutely ridiculous if the outside world thinks you are overconfident after winning two games, Sharma said.
“You don’t want to stop after two victories. Evidently, none of these guys know what sort of conversation takes place in the dressing room when they talk about being overconfident and other things, especially the guys who are not in the dressing room, he said.
Sharma stated that the team’s guiding principle was to never give the opposition the slightest opportunity to dominate and that he didn’t give a damn what people outside the group thought of their strategy.
“Not to give the opposition any room to manoeuvre when they play, especially when they are touring abroad, and that is exactly what we have also discovered when we have toured outside. You will never be allowed to enter the match or the series by the opposition. And that is also the way we think. We aim to perform at our peak in every game. It doesn’t really matter to us if it appears arrogant or anything of the sort to outsiders,” he said.
India have choose to bat after winning the toss in Indore, but they lost seven wickets in the opening session and were eventually dismissed for 109. Left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann took 5 for 16 in the innings. The home team performed better in the second innings, scoring 163, but they only managed to reach 76, giving Australia a nine-wicket victory. The Indian team had only lost three home Test matches in the previous ten years.
Read More
When speaking on the air during the Indore game’s Star Sports broadcast, Shastri had said: “This is what a little complacency, a little bit of overconfidence can do when you take things for granted, you drop guard and this game will bring you down. When you actually think back to the first innings, see some of the shots played, and see some of the overeagerness to try to dominate in these circumstances, I believe it was a combination of all these factors. You pause to think things through and analyse.
The victories in Nagpur and Delhi allowed India to clinch the Border-Gavaskar Trophy for the series against Australia. However, they must win in Ahmedabad to ensure a place in the World Test Championship final after dropping the third Test in Indore.
“Get more sports news, cricket news, and football updates, log on to sportsdigest.in. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter and Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.”
