Gautam Gambhir speaks on his side’s ability to play spin after poor showing with the bat against Mitchell Santner.
Gautam Gambhir is adamant that his side are good players of spin. However, he has conceded that the defensive abilities of players have declined.
“Sometimes you’ve got to give it to the opposition as well,” he said on Thursday, a day before the third Test in Mumbai. “I think Mitchell Santner was outstanding in the last game, but yes, we’ll keep working hard. We’ll keep getting better. That’s about it. Guys are putting a lot of hard yards in the nets. Yes, ultimately it’s the results that matter when you’re playing international cricket, but I don’t think so that our skill against spin has actually gone down.”
“Test cricket is about playing sessions,” Gambhir said. “I think if we can start to learn how to play sessions, and the kind of quality we have in our batting line-up. I think if we end up playing four to four-and-a-half sessions, we’ll have a lot of runs on the board.”
In each innings in this series, India has collapsed. They lost 7 for 54, 6 for 73, and 5 for 40 after the 46 all out occurred in Bengaluru under extremely unusual circumstances, which compelled them to practise batting time under trying circumstances.
The difficulty that contemporary batters encounter in the T20 cricket era has been brought to light by the inability to satisfy this basic requirement.
“We need to defend better,” Gambhir said. “I think that is something which is important. And especially on a turning track. Because if you’ve got confidence on your defence, a lot of things can be sorted. And that is something which we need to keep getting better, keep working on.
“Because, again, I’ll keep going back to the same answer that a lot has to do with limited over-cricket and T20 cricket as well that when you’re so used to muscling the ball, that you end up forgetting the soft hands and all that stuff, which probably used to happen eight or 10 years back. So that is something, that is why I said that a complete cricketer is a cricketer who plays T20 format really successfully and also the Test cricket really successfully. He can adapt his game. And that is what growth is.
“Growth is not only going about hitting the ball in the stands. It’s also about batting sessions on a turning track. Where you know that you will not be able to hit in the stands. But you will be able to rotate better. For that, I think the foundation is very, very important.”