Former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin called for a couple of changes from the side that collapsed meekly to a 333-run defeat in the first Test against Australia at Pune on Saturday. The 52-year-old pressed, in particular, all-rounder Jayant Yadav and pacer Ishant Sharma to be dropped from the squad.
Azhar predicted a certain amount of panic to set in the Indian ranks but predicted that the Bengaluru, where the second Test would be played, would not turn as much as Pune, “Any batting debacle leaves a team on the backfoot. I am not saying [that the] series is lost but one needs to look at the kind of track that you want to play”
“I reckon Chinnaswamy won’t have this kind of turn. So my gut feeling is that Jayant Yadav and Ishant Sharma may be dropped from the playing XI,” Azharuddin was quoted as saying by PTI.
The former skipper, under whom India didn’t lose a single home series in the 1990s, called for a specialist batsman to replace Yadav. He also opined that the swing of Bhuvneshwar Kumar would be a better bet than the pace of Ishant Sharma, “Going by their batting performance, I expect them to play an extra batsman – that is Karun Nair. He should be replacing Jayant in all likelihood.
“Also on the tracks that we are playing, Ishant’s back of the length stuff is not going to work. It is better that a swing bowler like Bhuvneshwar is brought into the team by Virat [Kohli],” Azharuddin said.
The Hyderabadi was critical of the performance of the Indian spinners in the Pune Test, “I think a similar pitch was prepared when Michael Clarke got his 6 for 9 in Mumbai. This was a bad pitch to bat on. But I am not at all happy with how the spinners bowled on a track like this – especially Ravindra Jadeja,” he said.
Azharuddin lauded the efforts of Steve O’Keefe, singling out the left-arm spinner getting the Indian batsman to play at deliveries, “O’Keefe bowled the line that Jadeja should have bowled. If you looked at Jadeja’s line, it was on off-stump or slightly outside the off-stump trying to make use of the rough. That was where he made the mistake. On this track, Jadeja’s channel would have never got him wickets and that’s precisely what has happened”
“Now what did O’Keefe bowl? He bowled on the middle and leg line and didn’t try for big turn. The batsmen can’t leave such deliveries. As a result, he got four lbw decisions. An orthodox left-arm spinner when he is getting 4 lbws means that he was bowling straight, knowing pitch will do the rest,” Azharuddin said.
Azharuddin also heaped praise on Australian captain Steve Smith and his strategy against Jadeja, playing only the incoming deliveries, “I believe this was one of the best Test hundreds scored on a bad pitch. This is not something Aussies are used to. Even if you do hours of match simulation, it’s very different while playing a Test match. Smith didn’t try and play for the turn. What he did was playing Jadeja’s incoming deliveries not thinking it would turn. That was the trick,” he said.
Azharuddin pointed at Nathan Lyon and O’Keefe faring much better than the English spinners, and wasn’t pleased with the Indian batsmen’s shot selection, “Against England on better tracks, they got one loose ball per over from guys like Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali. Here they didn’t get loose deliveries”
“The application needed to be far better. I am not saying you could just come down the track and attack mindlessly. That doesn’t happen always. But on a turner, you don’t play for the turn. Indian batsmen erred exactly in that area,” Azharuddin added.