Sunil Gavaskar slams Hardik Pandya, hits out at India’s over-reliance on Virat Kohli

Southampton: England edged India by 60 runs in the fourth Test at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton on Thursday and ensured a series win by picking an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series. Moeen Ali was the star of the show, finishing with overall figures of 134-9 as the visitors put up yet another disappointing batting display.

Unhappy with their performance, Sunil Gavaskar has once again ripped apart the Indian batting line-up for another dismal showing in the series. Chasing 245 runs to win, Virat Kohli led from the front in the fourth innings with a gritty half-century and alongside Ajinkya Rahane, gave India hope to keep the series alive after losing three early wickets. But after the India skipper departed, the tail soon crumbled and failed to steer the side over the line.

“When you go in with five batsmen then you are bound to be in such a situation where you rely so much only on one player, Virat Kohli to get you the big hundreds. He can’t do it every time, he’s human. To expect that the lower order (to save India after the top-order collapse) after that Kohli-Rahane partnership was broken, to get even another 60-70 runs was too much,” Gavaskar said during the post-match show.

Kohli has been India’s talisman so far in the series, leading the score charts with 544 runs under his belt. Cheteshwar Pujara and Rahane, are the only other two Indian batsmen who have managed to cross the 200-run mark. Gavaskar feels that the hosts exposed Kohli and co’s deficiencies and that worked in their favour at Southampton.

“Here (in Southampton) I think their deficiencies were shown. Earlier (at Edgbaston and Lord’s) I think the ball was moving around quite a bit so most opening batsmen would have struggled. But here in both these innings, I don’t think that was the case,” Gavaskar added.

The former India captain was also critical of Hardik Pandya, who failed to prove his potential on the big stage.

“You want to call Hardik Pandya an all-rounder? Whoever wants to call Pandya an all-rounder, may call! But I don’t think so,” he asserted.
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