England’s former swashbuckling batsman Kevin Pietersen reckons that there was nothing dangerous on the wicket in the third Test match at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The match was wrapped up within two days as the ball was turning square but Pietersen believes that the batting from both teams was dreadful.
The former English batsman feels the match could have gone into the third day had the teams batted better. 13 wickets were taken on the first day whereas 17 wickets fell on the second day. Out of the 30 wickets, 21 wickets were taken on straight balls and the batsmen didn’t show any kind of mental toughness to bat out the difficult phase.
Only Zak Crawley and Rohit Sharma scored half-centuries for their respective teams as the rest of the batsmen struggled to get going. Meanwhile, Axar Patel scalped 11 wickets in the match as his arm ball was lethal whereas Ravichandran Ashwin took seven wickets in the game. In fact, Joe Root bagged his first five-wicket haul in the Test format as he returned with 5-8 in the first innings.
“All I am going to say is that the batting was dreadful and awful from both teams. I think if they are honest with themselves, they will admit they batted poorly. 21 of the 30 dismissals came from straight deliveries. There was nothing dangerous on the wicket, there just needed to be better batting. With better batting, this would have gone to Day 3, maybe Day 4,” Pietersen said in his Instagram video.
Meanwhile, the Indian skipper Virat Kohli had also stated that the batting was not up to the standards of both teams. In fact, the balls which were turning big were not doing the damage and the batters failed to keep the straight balls at bay.
Only 387 runs were scored as the match lasted for only 140.2 overs. The batsmen were not mentally prepared for the pitch and there is no doubt that the batting was not up to the mark. This was the first time England lost a Test inside two days since 1912 as it became the shortest completed Test since 1935.
England was skittled out for a paltry score of 112 runs in the first innings and then the Indian team could only manage 145 runs. Subsequently, the visitors were bundled out for 81 runs in the second essay and thus gave a target of only 49 runs to the hosts.
