England vs India 2018: Visitors Didn’t Play as a Team - Kapil Dev

Former, India skipper, Kapil Dev regret by saying it was a tale of missed opportunities for the Indian team led by Virat Kohli in the ongoing five-match Test series between against the Three Lions wherein England had sealed the series by a 3-1 win after 60-run win in Southampton.

However, Dev analysed the cause for the poor results. India was looking good to level the series against the hosts.

“At one stage, India were able to put England on the mat by reducing them to a score of 86 for six in the for six in the fourth Test match. From there, England went on to make 246. Therefore, it’s pretty easy to make out how India lost out on the opportunity to make most the Southampton Test,” Dev told to TOI on Wednsesday.

Moreover, Kapil Dev also thinks that India is relying too much on captain Kohli.

Well, it could be the main reason why the Indian team is lagging behind and couldn’t work as a team.

“It’s not fair to rely so much on Kohli only. None of them showed up as Kohli did. India didn’t play as a team. Not only the Southampton Test, India could have won the opening Test as well if the team had grabbed the opportunities,” Dev added.

Furthermore, Dev also told that the top order batsman and the all-rounders eventually failed to provide some support.

Visitors were playing with five batsmen wherein mostly three of the five batsmen were getting out with scoring poor runs.

Moreover, Ravichandran Ashwin and Hardik Pandya also failed to provide runs for their team. All-rounder Pandya was putting pressure back on the opposition with the ball by bagging wickets at regular intervals. Off-spinner Ashwin couldn’t do anything of the two after he got injured in the third Test match at Trent Bridge.

“I won’t get into whom did India miss so on and so forth. But I am happy to see the Indian pace attack perform throughout the series,” Dev added.

India will their fifth Test match against England on September 7, 2018, at The Oval in London. However, Kapil Dev is hopeful of some good show from the visiting team as a unit.