With the exception of Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal, India’s batters had difficulty on a surface that ended up helping them.
Jaiswal was the only player to score a remarkable 209 throughout the first two days when the ball didn’t spin and came to bat rather nicely.
Shubman took on the challenge of hitting for his third Test century when the pitch began to play tricks on the batsmen.
In a conversation on ‘Match Centre Live’, at the end of the 2nd Test against England in Visakhapatnam on Monday, Zaheer Khan, analysed India’s batting performance.
“If you are one down in the series, you need that aggression, fight and belief to make sure that it is 1-1 after the end of the game. And I think Rohit was able to bring out those individual performances from the players. There are a few concerns when you look at the team – batting is something that they will be talking about because under these conditions, on this sort of a surface, we have seen India do better. You look at England’s second innings, there is only one half-century and they still managed to get close to 300. That is what collective effort can do. We have seen two brilliant innings – Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, but with the bat, there is a lot of work to be done,” Zaheer said.
In the bowling department, the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Jasprit Bumrah rose on the occasion and produced phenomenal spells with the ball.
Zaheer praised Rohit’s role as a captain in India’ success with the ball and said, “On the bowling front as well, you had the brilliance of Jasprit Bumrah. On this kind of surface, you feel that your spinners were at times under pressure, and because of that they needed the help from the batters. So, to control all these factors – this is where the captain needs to come into play, and Rohit has been superb when it comes to all these factors and situations.”
The third Test of the series starts on February 15 in Rajkot.
(With ANI inputs)