‘No one looked like they were willing to play ugly’ – Aakash Chopra criticises Indian squad for poor performance in 1st Test against South Africa

India and South Africa locked horns for the 1st test match of the 2-match Test series of India tour of South Africa at Centurion. Former India cricketer Aakash Chopra recently analysed India’s performance against South Africa and the first test and talked about the Points where India started to lose its grip in the match on his show ‘#AAKASHVANI’ on JioCinema. 

Aakash Chopra openly criticised the Indian batters except KL Rahul and Virat Kohli for not giving their all in both innings of the match. He also spoke about how Rohit Sharma lost his wicket to Rabada in both innings, while the other Yashasvi Jaiswal is yet to get a hang of these conditions in South Africa. 

Aakash Chopra analyses the Indian squad’s show in 1st Test 

“We have not been able to conquer the ‘Final Frontier’ once again. We may still level the series, but a win is out of the question now. We should change the name of the ‘Final Frontier’ to Dean Elgar. If I remember correctly, he was the one who helped South Africa win the Test series the last time round. He was absolutely outstanding in this Test too.”  

While talking about India’s approach in the Test, Aakash said, “When the third day’s play began, I felt there was a realistic chance of an Indian fightback. But that did not happen. An innings defeat is quite humbling. Except for (KL) Rahul in the first innings and (Virat) Kohli in the second, the others did not look convincing. No one looked like they were willing to play ugly, take body blows and stick around. Rohit Sharma was out to (Kagiso) Rabada in both innings. Yashasvi Jaiswal is still far from figuring out these conditions. Shreyas Iyer didn’t look good. India needed to bat for four-five sessions which did not happen.” 

“The South African bowlers stood tall, literally and figuratively. On the Centurion pitch that was quite uneven, their tall bowlers extracted better bounce and movement. Amongst India’s bowlers, barring (Jasprit) Bumrah and (Mohammed) Siraj in patches, no one bowled well. (Ravichandran) Ashwin was restrictive, Shardul (Thakur) was middling and Prasidh Krishna did not leave much of an impression in his first Test. The bowling unit looked rather undercooked. For example, Thakur last played initially in the World Cup but has not played competitive matches for the last month or two. He looked rusty”, he discussed.