Virat Kohli reacts after being dismissed by Sam Curran in the first innings of the 4th Test.
With India surrendering the ongoing Test series in Southampton on September 2 after yet another batting collapse questions are being raised about the potential of the team to walk the talk. Chasing 245 to win in the second innings at the Rose Bowl, India were cruising at 140/2 but ultimately collapsed to a 60-runs defeat to squander the five-match Test series 1-3 with one more match to go.
Former India opener Virender Sehwag slammed the team's performance saying that the batting doesn't inspire confidence and India still look far away from being capable of winning Test series in tough conditions.
The Indian team management including the head coach Ravi Shastri has reiterated its resolve to be the best travelling team in the world for a while now. But with results not going their way, Sehwag feels that all this talk is of no use if it can't be backed by performances on the field.
"Best travelling teams are made by performances on the ground and not by sitting in the dressing rooms and talking about it. One can talk whatever they want to talk about but unless the bat does the talking, they can never become the best travelling team," said Viru on IndiaTV's show 'Cricket Ki Baat'.
When Sehwag was asked what was the main reason for India's defeat in the ongoing series, he said that he was surprised at the inability of the Indians to handle spin in England. "Even the last time they played here, Moeen Ali emerged as the highest wicket-taker amongst spinners on the tour. I think he bowled better than Ashwin even though the English batsmen played spin better than our batsmen. Even though it's believed that subcontinental batsmen play spin rather well. But we should give England the credit for batting and bowling better in the second innings."
Sehwag was also critical of the reactions of Indian captain Virat Kohli after the series defeat. While giving due credit to England in the post-match press conference, Kohli had stated that he was happy that the team had competed well in the series and just regretted that they couldn't cross the final hurdle of winning.
"We already learnt the art of winning single Test matches under Sourav Ganguly but we also couldn't win a series overseas. So the problems are still the same. But the difference then was that our batsmen used to score runs but we didn't have the bowling to take 20 wickets. Nowadays we have the bowling to do that but not the batsmen who can score runs. We haven't scored more than 300 runs in an innings in the last few Tests, except maybe once or twice. It is very easy to say that 'we are trying', 'we are not able to cross the line' or 'we will try in the next series' but we have been repeating these statements for a decade now and we still haven't won a series in Australia, England and South Africa in this period," concluded Viru.
