India need to avoid losing wickets at breaks as it has contributed significantly to India letting dominant positions slip.
India’s regular wicket losses before or just after play breaks will have greatly irritated them during their tour to England. Let’s start by using the Lord’s Test as an illustration.
Rishabh Pant ran himself out in their opening innings on day three, three balls before lunch. After the interval, his batting partner KL Rahul edged a drive to slip less than two overs later. The same day, Jamie Smith bagged both of their chances behind the wicket as they lost Nitish Kumar Reddy 3.3 overs after tea and Ravindra Jadeja 3.2 overs after the last drinks break. They lost their final four wickets for only 11 runs after the Jadeja wicket set off a collapse.
In a thrilling last hour late on the fourth day, India fell from 41 from 1 to 58 for 4, losing three second-inning wickets in 31 balls. In the first hour of the last morning, three more wickets were lost in 23 balls. Then, just when Reddy appeared to be forming a partnership with Jadeja, he fell with four balls left for lunch.
The first Test loss at Headingley followed a similar pattern. Just before lunch on the first morning, Rahul and rookie B Sai Sudharsan fell in five deliveries. After tea, Yashasvi Jaiswal left in the second over. India lost six wickets before noon on the second day, so they would want to forget it, collapsing from 447 for 4 to 471 all out.
India may have felt that their batters lost concentration or played a careless shot either side of a break, but a large portion of the aforementioned dismissals were the consequence of England’s bowlers carrying out their strategies. Throughout the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, which now travels to Manchester with the fourth Test beginning at Old Trafford on July 23, head coach Gautam Gambhir and his two batting assistants, Sitanshu Kotak and Ryan ten Doeschate, have been attempting to discover the answer to this puzzle.
Despite down 2-1 in the series, the Indians were frank throughout the Beckenham session. With the exception of Pant, who is recuperating from a finger injury he suffered at Lord’s, the other batters had a regular hit in the nets, while Rahul was the only one out. Nothing about their doing anything different was visible from a distance.
The good news is that India is aware of their bad behaviour and knows what has to be done to prevent it from becoming chronic.