Former Indian batter and presenter Mohammad Kaif has questioned Indian skipper Shubman Gill and his team for failing to find Sonal Dinusha’s weakness in the second Test of the two-match series against Sri Lanka.
Speaking on Sony Sports, Kaif noted that the Indian bowlers couldn’t plan properly against the Sri Lankan Southpaw batter despite having a huge support staff on their side. For the unversed, Dinusha smacked an unbeaten 133 off 264 balls in the second innings as both sides settled for a draw.
“Every batter has a shortcoming somewhere. You need to find where the shortcoming is. I am not talking about Gill. I am talking about the entire bowling unit and even the coaching staff. Everyone sits together and discusses that he scored a hundred in Galle, and where we can trap him when he comes now. Tactically, I agree that they attacked less; the field was opened up yesterday, and the drive ball wasn’t bowled,” Kaif said on Sony Sports Network.
“Saransh Jain had dismissed him with that after his hundred. Mohammed Siraj had bowled a full ball, and he left it because he doesn’t like playing the drive. He doesn’t like playing shots there. You are talking about India. It’s not a club match that you got late. A video analyst is sitting, a stats person is sitting, and six or seven coaches are sitting,” he added.
Furthermore, Kaif emphasised that India’s young bowling attack lacked experience on Day 5, adding that they haven’t seen him at all before the start of the Test series. Dinusha scored 420 runs at an average of 140 in four innings as he emerged as the leading run-scorer in the series.
“Our modern young bowlers play very rarely on such a pitch. They don’t play on the fifth day. A Test match doesn’t go that long. So they also don’t know how to tackle it, and we have not seen this batter. Assuming you get Joe Root, Ravindra Jadeja has bowled against him, so you can plan,” he said.
“They haven’t seen him at all. So there was a slight surprise package as well. The mistake happened in the second Test match. I can agree that you hadn’t seen him in the first Test match. In the second Test match, you won’t find a single boundary with a cover drive. He has played the pull, sweep, reverse sweep, but not the cover drive,” Kaif noted.
