Despite series win, India still have major middle order woes remarks Mohinder Amarnath

Former Team India all-rounder Mohinder Amarnath heaps praise on Virat Kohli-led side for winning their maiden series in the Rainbow Nation. However, despite India’s dominance, he is of the opinion that the middle order still looks brittle. He believes it may cause a major problem in the near future.

During his column for the Times of India, Amarnath said that India will be hurt at losing the Test series. Despite their thumping performance in the limited-overs leg of the tournament, he states the side has to work on more. India lost the first two Tests in Cape Town and Centurion to surrender the series. However, they came back strongly in the third Test on a tough pitch.

“Although they won the ODIs comfortably, the main purpose of the South Africa tour would have been to win the Tests. So there is still some work to do as far as the five-day format is concerned and the combination still needs some work when they go abroad,” Amarnath wrote in his column.

“There’s no doubt that India is definitely playing their best cricket right now. The turnaround was winning that third and final Test and it was a crucial win. Although they had lost the series, we could see the intensity was always there, they wanted to do well and show the world that they could win Test matches away too. If luck had gone India’s way, they just might have won the Tests too,” he further added.

Amaranth expressed his concern over India’s over-dependence on a certain Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan. The Indian skipper ended the series with 558 runs while Shikar Dhawan scored 332 runs. They won the ODI series 5-1 and are on their way of beating the hosts even in the shortest format.

“As far as the one-dayers go, usually there is not much difference between sides in this format of the game. It depends on how you play on the day, but then again I felt India was riding on just one man, and that is the captain, Virat Kohli,” wrote Amarnath.

 

“He is right there at the top with the best in the business. And that’s a very good sign for India. However, other than Virat and Shikhar Dhawan, we’ve not seen much from the rest in the batting department. The worry is, what if the top order doesn’t come through on a particular day, what would happen? It is here that India needs to really work hard and try and get a settled and strong middle order.”

The South African batsmen were left dumfound in front of the wrist spinning duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. They shared 33 wickets between them.

In the point of view of Mohinder Amarnath, he feels that the struggles of South Africa have kept them in a bad space. He also backed India to close out the T20I series as well.

“If they have been confused by the Indian spinners, on Sunday they were outdone by the medium pace of Bhuvneshwar Kumar. He really controls the game when it comes to a tight situation. So India looks a much better, superior team, and they should win this T20 series as well,” Amarnath signed off.

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