Former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathandid not mince words while analysing India's 0-2 whitewash at home to South Africa after they lost the second Test in Guwahati by a thumping 408-run margin, their heaviest loss in Test cricket history.
Irfan labelled India's cricket as "shocking" and compared how the team lacked big time when it came to player-to-player comparison for the same role across both teams.
"It’s really embarrassing. The way India has played Test cricket at home recently against South Africa
is just shocking. This has been going on for a while. They got badly beaten by New Zealand at home too. Now here, in a two-match Test series against South Africa, they lost 0-2, and it didn’t even seem like they had the skills in batting or bowling. If you look man-to-man, even the South African spinners, whether it’s Harmer or Maharaj, they bowled much better," stated Irfan in a video on his YouTube channel.
The erstwhile all-rounder called for injecting more specialist batters in the Test setup to provide increased stability. He also voiced against the method of stacking the XI with all-rounders, which was the case in both matches of the recently-concluded series.
"How are you going to save the match? You’ve got to play the whole day. You just won’t be able to hold on. You need a pure batter. You absolutely need one. Changes have to be made. Talking about pure batters in this Test match, you’ve got Sai Sudharsan, KL Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal. These three are pure batters. The rest of your players are all-rounders: some wicketkeeper-batters, some bowling all-rounders, some batting all-rounders. When you have so many all-rounders, you’ll struggle in the specialist roles. We need to plan a roadmap for that going forward in Test cricket," he added.
India were on the backfoot after losing the series-opening clash by 30 runs at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Speaking of the second Test, they looked the better side on only Day 1. But from that point onwards, it was all South Africa, be it with bat or ball.
It was a nightmarish series for the hosts as far as the batters are concerned. The Indian batters collectively averaged 15.23 across the two matches, the second-lowest for them in any Test series home or away. The lowest is still 12.42 on the 2002/03 New Zealand tour.
