India deserve to lose the series. There is no doubt about that. They did not prepare well, they were complacent, stubborn and above all, the BCCI did not really care. They were poorly led and in this, the management team that comprises of Dravid cannot escape the blame. India were humiliated by a team who hardly played over the previous 5 months and with a bunch of players who weren’t that experienced. Being an Indian, it is horrible to think that a golden chance to win a series in South Africa for the first time ever was missed. That was mainly because a group of senior players failed to raise their game when it mattered. The reason for the loss was multiple. Stubborn and inflexible captain, senior liabilities, poor toss decision, stupid team selection amongst other factors. Let me devour each of these.
Egoistic, stubborn and inflexible captain
Virat Kohli will be known for the foreseeable future as the most successful Indian captain. 60 wins at 58% win-loss ratio is impressive by any standards. Only Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting have higher percentage of wins and they captained the all conquering Australian sides. Any captain who has led that Australian team will obviously have a successful track record. However, this series was lost because of Kohli and his brand of captaincy.
The pitches were expected to carry lot of bounce
First of all, whenever an Asian team tours South Africa, the pitches will come to life. They will be loaded in favour of the home team’s fast bowlers. Not that the pitches will not help the seamers when Australia or England or New Zealand tours but the pitches will be extra spicy for the Asian teams. More so, for India. It is a known thing and there is nothing wrong with that. All the team world over lay down tracks that may or may not help the home team but will be difficult for the opposition. Same happens in India, England or Australia.
The pitches in this series wasn’t any different either. It was never going to be a 450 against 450 pitch. Scores in the region of 300-325 will be match winning. With the ball bouncing and moving throughout the day, wickets will fall in a heap. This was all expected. Bowlers will not bowl more than 150 overs over the entire two innings. This essentially means that they will never be over-bowled. The seamers that India have are more than capable of exploiting the conditions on offer. However, they need runs on the board. This is where Kohli failed as the captain.
Jadeja’s absence created a catch-22 situation
In the absence of Jadeja, he was handicapped on the 6th batsman and the 5th bowler front. Kohli did not have a choice but to pick Ashwin in the team. This was perfectly understandable in the first test. India were playing with 5 bowlers for awhile now that it made sense to start with 5 bowlers at Centurion. Except for the first innings, the scores never touched 300 for either team. It was clear for anyone that the help on offer for the quicker bowlers was immense. Ashwin hardly had a role to play at Centurion. Infact, he had sent down 22 overs across two innings for a partly return of a couple of wickets. This was exceptionally less by any standards.
Spinners are usually required to bowl around 25-30 overs per innings but because of the help on offer to the seamers, the South African innings did not last long enough for a spinner to bowl a lot of overs. As a result, Ashwin was under-bowled and his batting outside India is always suspect. He will hit the odd crisp and beautiful looking 4 through the covers but will give away his wicket. It was only a question of when. Whether he did not give much importance to his batting or whether his ability with the bat is limited is debatable.
Poor decision to go in with just 5 suspect batsmen
The Indian 2nd innings at Centurion clearly showed that the South African bowlers were wayward in the first innings and as soon as they hit their straps, India folded for a paltry score in the 2nd innings. It must have been clear to Kohli at that stage that a spinner will not have a role to play in the whole series. He must have immediately changed the strategy to four seamers and no spinner but as it transpired, Kohli didn’t. India went ahead in the next couple of tests with the same combination and were thoroughly decimated. This was down to pure ego on the part of Kohli.
He had his game plan based on 5 bowlers and he stuck to that without realising or not wanting to realise that there simply isn’t room for a 5th bowler. Across the 3 games, Ashwin bowled only 64 overs. That is hardly the workload of a spinner. Neither Kohli nor Rahul trusted Ashwin’s bowling. So why on earth did he even play? Hanuma Vihari, who can turn his arm over for a few overs to give the seamers rest must have played ahead of Ashwin as the 6th batsman but Kohli will have none of it.
Kohli must have analysed
He seems to think that all those wins in 2021 was because there were 5 bowlers and because of that, it does not matter what the conditions are, he will still play the 5th bowler. If only Kohli had scratched the surface he would have realised that the wins at Gabba, Lord’s, Centurion were not because of the team played with 5 bowlers. Lord’s because of some extraordinary hitting by Shami and Bumrah without which England would have knocked off the runs quite easily. Gabba because of a batsman in Sundar who is certainly better than Ashwin and Jadeja in terms of ability with the bat. Centurion because South Africa weren’t ready for the series. Kohli’s ego and inflexible attitude clearly overshadowed everything. If only Kohli had swallowed a bit of his ego, things would have panned out differently.
I really wonder how this team would have fared against the past South African team. I really shudder to think about the outcome. It would have been a whitewash along epic lines. Not much different from the 2011 tours. The fact that it wasn’t was because of South Africa’s own inexperience.
Please proceed to read volume 2 of my rant.