ENG vs IND: When Most Of Your Batters Don't Score, You Lose Chance To Reach A Dominating Position - Aakash Chopra

Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra reckoned that the blame will be pointed toward the Indian batting lineup apart from a certain few who were able to contribute a healthy amount of runs.

Apart from Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, and Cheteshwar Pujara, the others failed to contribute anything significant and India is on the brink of defeat heading into Day 5 despite dominating the first three days.

“If you look at who scored runs for India in this game, it was [Rishabh] Pant and [Ravindra] Jadeja in the first innings, and [Cheteshwar] Pujara, Pant, and Jadeja in the second. When most of your batters don’t score runs, you lose the opportunity to reach a dominating position in the game.”

“If India don’t defend this, I will definitely point my guns at the Indian batters. When you have 6-7 batters, you expect that just two of them won’t be doing all the scoring,” Chopra said in his YouTube video.

“I won’t point any guns at him” – Aakash Chopra on Pant

Notably, Pant scored a half-century to follow up his blazing hundred in the first innings. However, he attempted a poor reverse sweep which saw his downfall but Chopra doesn’t think it was a poor shot.

“Rishabh Pant did his job by smashing a half-century in the second innings. Many are saying that the shot (reverse sweep) that got him out wasn’t necessary. But I don’t think the situation was a problem.”

“He was on 50 (57) and he wanted to dominate and take the game forward. I won’t point any guns at him. The shot was fine according to me,” he also noted.

England has raced away to 259/3 in pursuit of 378 and they hold all the aces going into the fifth and final day.

Also Read – India missed a trick with Ravindra Jadeja bowling over the wicket – Graeme Swann