India managed to put in a lacklustre performance against South Africa in the first Test at Centurion where the the home side managed to bundle out India in the second innings for a mere 131 runs thereby securing the victory by an innings and 32 runs.
Despite KL Rahul’s valiant century in the first innings, the Indian bowlers were not able to take advantage of the conditions as South Africa managed to close out their first innings score with 408 runs on the board. The experienced Dean Elgar was the star with the bat having scored 185 runs while all-rounder, Marco Jansen managed to score an unbeaten 84 coming in at number seven in the batting order.
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The former coach of the Indian cricket Team, Ravi Shastri, was critical of Shardul Thakur’s performance in the Centurion Test. The fast-bowling all-rounder was brought back into the side after Mohammed Shami was ruled out of the Test series due to injury.
The former coach believes that the Indian team missed the quality of Mohammed Shami in the Test, he added,” India lacked experience in their bowling attack. They’ve got two of them who are reasonably experienced – Bumrah and Siraj – but they missed Shami big time.”
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Thakur failed to create much of an impact in the Test with both ball and bat. He managed to score 24 and 2 across both innings while giving away 101 runs in the 19 overs he bowled in the first innings as well.
Shastri said,” Shardul Thakur is not a baby, but he is the 4th seamer. You need a proper third seamer and that makes a massive difference overseas.”
The lack of an experienced pacer in the squad seems to be hurting India as they have only Mukesh Kumar in their squad as an additional pacer. However, an interesting name that was brought up in the conversation by Shastri was the left-arm pacer, Arshdeep Singh.
However, the former India coach believes that despite his good performance in the white-ball leg against South Africa, he is not ready for the red-ball format which is a different challenge altogether. But Shastri believes that India should make him play first-class cricket where he can build experience to take on the challenge of red-ball cricket.
Shastri said,” The thing is you want to see his First-Class record. Can he bowl long spells? Has he played a lot of Ranji Trophy cricket? I would in fact go and make him play a lot of it, Ranji and First-Class cricket and keep him in the mix because if someone can swing it like he did with the white ball in South Africa, he could be a handy customer.”
India will now go up against South Africa for the second and final Test which will be held in Cape Town.
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