Criticisms are pouring in for Virat Kohli after India lost to Australia by 146 runs in Perth on Tuesday. The latest to join the critics list was none other than former India captain and legendary Sunil Gavaskar. The legendary opener was baffled with the “selection blunders” that India did in the Perth Test which the visitors lost by 146 runs to squander 1-0 lead.
Sunil Gavaskar was particularly baffled by the fact that India didn’t have a spinner in the playing XI when Australia’s Nathan Lyon — with eight wickets in his kitty — did most of the damage and won the Man of the Match award in Australia’s winning cause.
The former opener also raked up India’s tour of South Africa during the beginning of this year, picking wrong players “has lost matches which could’ve been won.”
The India captain, however, defended the team’s move to go in with a four-pronged pace attack. “We as a team didn’t think we definitely wanted to consider a spinner on this pitch, especially looking at the pitch on day one and how we thought it would play the first three days, which is how it did play,” Kohli had said at the post-match press conference in Perth.
“We thought the fast bowlers were going to be more productive for us as a team. They executed their plans to 95 per cent of what we expected and you can be happy with that. We were pretty convinced going in with four fast bowlers, looking at the conditions, and I think they did pretty well,” Kohli had said.
Kohli also put his weight behind two out-of-form openers KL Rahul and Murali Vijay to return to form. However, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin is likely to be fit and available for selection for the Boxing Day Test, commencing in Melbourne on December 26.
ALSO READ: Rishabh Pant’s sledging in the first Test isn’t liked by Sunil Gavaskar; Twitter reacts