Gambhir defends India’s lower-order flop show in Leeds Test

India cricket team head coach refused to pinpoint the failures of India’s lower-order with the bat as the reason for the loss in ENG vs IND 1st Test. Majority of the runs scored by Shubman Gill and co. in Leeds came from the top five while the middle and lower-order batters failed to deliver. Despite victory being in their clutches, England managed to steal a 5-wicket win to go 1-0 up in the series.

Gambhir refuses to blame lower-order batting for India’s loss

Speaking at the post-match press conference, Gambhir pointed out that sometimes players fail, adding that it wasn’t like they weren’t applying themselves well. He noted that had India managed to get over 550 runs in the 1st innings, then they could have dominated the game. Gambhir added that the players who failed to fire would be more disappointed with the result than anyone else.

“First of all, I’ll tell you it’s not that they were not applying themselves. Sometimes people fail, and that’s okay. I know it is disappointing and more importantly, I think they are more disappointed than anyone. Because they knew that we had the opportunity. If we had got up to 570, 580 in the first innings, we could have dominated from there,” Gambhir stated.

Further, the India head coach failed to single out the performances of India’s tail enders. He claimed that even pure batters failed at times, while adding that it wasn’t like they weren’t giving it their all in the nets.

“It’s not that they’re not working hard in the nets as well. Sometimes these things happen, even the pure batters fail as well. So hopefully they got to learn, and hopefully we can have better performances from our tail, and that is not the only reason why we lost the Test match, to be honest. There were other moments as well where we could have won the Test match. I’m not going to sit here and single out ‘it’s because of the tail’ or ‘the tail couldn’t contribute’ or ‘8, 9, 10, 11 couldn’t contribute’,” Gambhir added.