New Delhi: Former captain Sunil Gavaskar was scathing in his criticism after Ishant Sharma and company conceded 500 runs for the third time in the ongoing Test series against Australia, saying that he has “no expectations” from the Indian bowling attack and termed it “hopeless”.
Asked if the performance of Indian bowlers frustrated him, Gavaskar gave a sarcastic answer, “It’s frustrating when you expect from them! I never had any expectations from this bowling attack. Yes you do hope that they perform but realistically it was not possible,” Gavaskar told ‘NDTV’ today.
“You needed to get early wickets and when that didn’t happen, you knew that they were going to score 500 plus runs. The Indian bowlers should also learn from the application showed by the likes of Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris over the past two Test matches.
“With no Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who could provide some resistance at No7 or 8, there hasn’t been any contribution from the Nos 9, 10 and 11,” Gavaskar opined.
The legendary opener is not averse to trying a new bowling set-up as he feels it won’t do any worse than the current lot.
“I am trying to find a suitable word to describe their performance. In one word, they were hopeless. Look this is more or less the same bowling attack that has been there since 2011 and they haven’t performed in South Africa, New Zealand or England where conditions for bowling were better.
“If they couldn’t perform there, no way that they would have performed on Australian wickets, which is better for batting. It was expecting too much from them. I believe there is no harm in trying out a new attack as they can’t perform worse than this,” he stated.
The batting great also didn’t pay too much attention to Ravichandran Ashwin’s comments that India will make 650 in the first innings.
“You have to be an absolute optimist to think that they will win. At the most they can salvage a draw.”
Gavaskar praised opener Murali Vijay, who now has four 50 plus scores in five innings so far.
“Vijay has been patient about his shot selection and has adapted beautifully. I believe one half of the opening problem is solved,” he said.
Meanwhile, disappointed they might be after conceding “too many runs” to the Australians, but Indian off-spinner R Ashwin said the tourists will pile up their own share today in the ongoing third cricket Test as the wicket has become flat now.
India had pushed Australia on the backfoot yesterday by reducing them to 259 for five but let the advantage slip today and the hosts ended up with 530 on the board. In reply, the Indians were 108 for one when stumps were drawn on the second day today.
Ashwin said it was disappointing to let go of the advantage but exuded confidence that his side’s batsmen will do the job on day three. (PTI)