Mumbai, Nov 27: Former players Anil Kumble and Venkatesh Prasad have questioned the Indian team’s muddled approach, lack of stability and the increasing reliance on all-rounders in the wake of the 0-2 series loss to South Africa.The Proteas inflicted a 408-run defeat on India in the second Test, their heaviest defeat by margin of runs, in Guwahati on Wednesday.
Kumble was scathing about the constant chopping and changing method of head coach Gautam Gambhir, under whom India have lost a home series 0-3 to New Zealand last year, surrendered the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to Australia and now gone down to South Africa at home for the first time in 25 years.
“Test match cricket requires a different mindset, you can’t really have so many all rounders, so much chopping and changing, so many changes in the batting order, in the team itself. Every second game you have a new player coming in, couple of guys get dropped,” Kumble said on the official broadcast.
The past year has seen the exits of Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, Cheteshwar Pujara and Rohit Sharma from the Test arena, leaving a young group to fill massive shoes.
“I think India needs to sit down and think and ponder. You can’t forget these results, you need to have a discussion around how you see Indian Test cricket go forward. Stalwarts have retired in the last 6-8 months and when that happens you need to have a vision and have a conversation as to what the team has to do,” Kumble said.
“You can’t get players in a side and hope they will develop and grow in the team. It can’t happen, you can have 1 or 2 players like that in the line up if you have 8-9 strong players who have the experience. But you can’t have 1-2 experienced batters and bowlers and the rest of them are trying to find their feet.”