Team India had thought of making a comeback in the series by taking spin wickets in the Pune Test. But on the second day of the game, when the entire team collapsed for just 156 runs, the plans of captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Gautam Gambhir were badly ruined. The Indian team itself seemed to be trapped in its own trap. Batsmen like Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill looked helpless in front of the New Zealand spinners. On this, former New Zealand veteran cricketer and commentator Simon Doull took a dig and publicly insulted him.
What did Dool say?
Simon Doull strongly criticized Team India’s approach against New Zealand in Pune. Seeing the Indian batsmen kneeling down on Mitchell Santner, who took 7 wickets, he said, ‘It is a misunderstanding that he is a good player of spin. The era of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly or Rahul Dravid is gone. Now the players of the Indian team are also like the batsmen of other countries. As soon as good spinners come in, they start having problems. The same thing was seen in IPL also. As soon as the ball started rotating, the batsmen started complaining. Doull even jokingly said that the batsmen of the Indian team cannot even play swing and seam.
Ian Smith, who was commentating with Doull, also criticized the Indian batsmen. He described it as worse than the all out of 46 in Bengaluru. According to him, the condition of the Indian team in the Pune Test was the result of poor batting and shot selection. Smith said that ‘he feels that he will simply wash out New Zealand’s bowling line up. Instead of playing the ball, he is just trying to hit big shots.
Struggle against spin
Since the year 2020, Team India’s batsmen have had trouble playing spin. This has affected his batting. Star batsman Virat Kohli’s average against spin used to be 72.45 between 2013 and 2019. Since 2020 it has come down to 32.86. Whereas captain Rohit Sharma used to bat against spin at an average of 88.33, which has come down to 37.83.
