Clueless Captaincy And Same Old Mistakes Lead To Another Embarrassing SENA Defeat
Rohit Sharma (X.Com)
Another Test outside India and another embarrassing defeat for the Rohit Sharma led Indian Team in whites. There was a sense of calmness when the duo of Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid took charge of the Indian side in late 2021, but rather than taking the Indian team to greater heights, things have gone backwards and to a point of no return.
After playing some dazzling cricket in the World Cup 2023, the law of averages finally caught up at the wrong time when India faced a rampaging Travis Head and Australia in the finals. A heartbreaking and painstaking defeat was a bitter pill for everyone to swallow, but a Test win in South Africa was a great chance to hide that World Cup pain.
However, a captain-less South Africa team ran all over the under-cooked Indian side as the Proteas won the first Test by a walloping margin of an innings and 32 runs. South Africa has always been the final frontier for any Asian team, and it was no different for Team India, who were on a quest to win their first Test series in the Rainbow Nation. But as India have done so often, their chances were ruined by one's own words and actions.
Why did India lost against South Africa at Centurion?
School-boy bowling (barring Bumrah)
Surely by now India have played so much cricket against Dean Elgar, that they would have known that the left-handed batter has the tendency to struggle against short-pitched deliveries. What did India do? They allow Elgar to feast on him. Elgar has an issue with short ball, aiming right at his body. Did India bowl enough short-pitched deliveries to trouble Elgar? No, they didn't. Instead, they kept on feeding him outside the off-stump and that allowed Elgar to score runs freely.
Barring Bumrah, the other Indian bowlers looked toothless. A lot was expected from the debutant, Prasidh Krishna, but it seemed like the weight of doing well in SENA nation took a toll and he looked erratic right from the start. There is a knack of picking Shardul Thakur in overseas Tests, but it has been two years since he last performed in the whites for India.
Clueless captaincy by Rohit
Okay, South Africa are 46/1 in their first innings at the Lunch break, and India desperately need a wicket to stay in the contest. What does Rohit do? He introduces Shardul right from the onset and Prasidh from the other end, and it allowed the Proteas pair of Elgar and Tony De Zorzi to score runs freely without taking any risks. The Indian bowling pair conceded 40 runs after the lunch break and that is when Rohit introduced Bumrah to control the run-flow.
Ideally, in a low-scoring game, you need your best bowler to start the proceedings, but that didn't happen here.
Moreover, Test matches requires an aggressive mindset by the captain, which clearly lacked in Rohit's case. The body language said the entire story when Elgar was taking the attack to the opposition.
Selection debacle
South Africa is considered the most difficult place to bat for a touring side. Yet, Team India went with just 6 proper batters. Rohit Sharma has a batting average worse than R Ashwin in South Africa, Yashasvi Jaiswal is inexperience and Shubman Gill has a technical flaw. Yet, the Team management decided that 6 batters are enough to tackle the hostile Proteas bowling attack.
R Ashwin at number 7 was another baffling decision. India could have gone with an extra batter, but they decided against it.
The decision making was atrocious, and with the game ending inside 3 days, India have enough time to ponder on their baffling decisions, as the next Test commences from January 3.
 "Anurag Dasgupta")
