BIRMINGHAM, July 5: India couldn’t negotiate the short ball and had an “ordinary” day with the bat, allowing England to fightback and put themselves firmly in the driver’s seat in the rescheduled fifth Test, said batting coach Vikram Rathour.
“I’ll agree that we had a pretty ordinary day as far as batting is concerned. We were ahead, we were in a position where we could have batted them out of the game. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen,” Rathour said during the press-conference.
“A lot of them got starts but couldn’t convert them. We were expecting one of them to play a big knock and have a big partnership but unfortunately it didn’t happen like that.” India paid the price for their poor shot selection as they struggled against the short-pitched deliveries with Shreyas Iyer falling to a bouncer yet again. Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah too followed suit in a similar fashion.
“Yes, they used a short-ball plan against us in the field,” Rathour said.
“We had to show a little better, not intent, but strategy. We could’ve handled it slightly differently. People tried to play shots but didn’t really convert or execute them well enough. They got out to that.
“We will have to rethink how we handle that next time in a similar situation, against similar bowlers who keep similar fields. We will need to have a better strategy against them.” (PTI)
