Image Credit- BCCI
In which area did India lose the Hyderabad match? Was
it when England ran amok in the second innings and their spinners failed to
halt Ollie Pope? Was it on the fourth day, when their batsmen failed to cope
with rookie left-arm spinner Tom Hartley? Nope. The worst error they committed,
according to head coach Rahul Dravid, was leaving runs on the pitch during
their opening batting innings.
“I thought we left probably 70 runs on the board
in the first innings. You know, I think in our first innings, when conditions
were pretty good to bat in on day two, I thought in the kinds of situations we
got ourselves into, some good starts and we didn’t really capitalise,”
Dravid said. “We didn’t get a hundred, you know, we didn’t get somebody
getting a really big hundred for us. So, in some ways, in India, I just felt we
left those 70, 80 runs back in the hut in the first innings.
“Second innings is always going to be
challenging. It’s one of those things that, you know, it’s tough. It’s not easy
to chase 230 or it’s not done very often.”
Some who failed to translate their first-inning starts
into higher scores were Shubman Gill, Rohit Sharma, and, to a lesser extent,
Shreyas Iyer. On that measure, Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, and Ravindra Jadeja
performed better; nevertheless, they were all halted in the 1980s. Is there
anything this generation of hitters can’t do to counteract spin better than the
one before it?
“Look, I wouldn’t be too harsh,” Dravid
said. “Rahul missed a really short ball. It just stopped. One of those
things can go straight into deep midwicket’s hand. But, like I said earlier, I
thought even in the first innings we could have converted some of those starts
and probably got us closer to 500 and completely sealed the game. But, having
said that, you know, I thought 190 was a really good score, to be very honest
with you. But then again, not many teams come in and score 420 in the third
innings in India and not many players go 196. So, you know, well done.”