India head coach Gautam Gambhir blamed rise of T20 cricket for the poor defence of Indian batters in recent times. Notably, the famed Indian batting line up was brought down to their knees in the second Test against New Zealand at Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune as the Blackcaps won the match by 113 runs and handed India their first series defeat at home since 2012.
Indian batters looked clueless against spin as left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner registered his career-best figures of 13/157 and bamboozled the hosts in their own den. Even senior players such as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma had no answer to Santner’s variations who spun New Zealand to their historic maiden Test series win in India.
Recently, Gambhir opened up on India’s glaring weakness against spin in recent times and blamed T20 cricket for their poor defence while facing spin. However, the India head coach stressed on the importance of good defence and said that the team is working towards it and the results will follow in future.
“The more the T20 cricket is played (around the world), the more the people will struggle in defending. But the most successful players irrespective of the formats always had strong defence. We need to keep telling people the importance of defence and we are working hard on it and we will see results in future,” said Gambhir in the pre-match press conference.
“Sometimes you’re so used to muscling the ball that you end up forgetting the soft hands which probably used to happen eight or 10 years back. A complete cricketer is a cricketer who plays T20 format and Test cricket successfully. He can adapt his game.”But you will see probably going forward in future, we’ll have the same issues with a lot of other teams as well because the more the T20 cricket is played, the lesser people will start defending,” he added.
