India’s bowling coach Morne Morkel has admitted that the team would reflect end of the tour whether they were right in not playing four frontline bowlers in the five-match Test series. Right through the ongoing Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, in search of batting depth India have taken the field three premier pacers with the other three mostly picked for their batting ability. Only for the final Test at the Oval, have India gone in with just three quicks and two spinners as they brought in an extra batsman in Karun Nair.
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With Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar being their preferred options for spin, Kuldeep Yadav has spent the entire Test series warming the bench. Before the series began, the left-arm wrist-spinner was expected to play a prominent role in the series, but India team management has thought otherwise. This strategy has come under fire, with critics saying India not showing the hunger to pick 20 wickets to win Tests.
At end of Day 4 of the Oval Test, Morkel was asked about India’s strategy to not play four frontline bowlers and admitted there were conversations around it. “To be honest with you, that’s part of the conversation before every selection so far. And we just felt leading into the Test matches, if you look at the wicket and sort of the overhead conditions for the first three days, we felt that going with the extra batter was going to be to be important. I think in the last two Test matches, our force team didn’t really bowl that much because Washi and Jadeja also could end up and bowl some overs. And yeah, they just thought, okay, having a lot of extra runs on the board that was more important. But I think that’s something we’ll obviously reflect on after the tour. The things we could have done better,” Morkel said.
When Joe Root and Harry Brook were running away with the Test, it appeared it was over for good. But as has been the case throughout the tour, India failed to thrown in the towel and hit back at the right moments to leave the Test on a knife-edge. “You can’t really afford to throw in the towel on a very important Test match and for us it was key to break that partnership, get a new better in. We’ve seen it so many times before where if you get one, you can easily get one or two and just create a bit of pressure around that. So I it wasn’t (case of) hard words or no sort of big talk, it’s just for us to stay calm and really work hard to break that partnership and from there, just to get the ball in the right area,” Morkel said.
