Centurion, Dec 29
Following the defeat by an innings and 32 runs to South Africa in the first Test, India captain Rohit Sharma believes fast-bowling spearhead Jasprit Bumrah wasn't given the desired support by the rest of the bowlers and felt the pitch wasn’t of a kind to conceded 400 runs to the hosts’.
Bumrah was the pick of bowlers for India with 4-69, while Mohammed Siraj briefly shined in his 2-91. But their change bowlers, Prasidh Krishna and Shardul Thakur, were ineffective and lacklustre in their lines and lengths while taking a wicket each in what was a disappointing bowling show from the visitors’.
With Ravichandran Ashwin being reduced to a restrictive role, though he took a wicket, it allowed the Proteas batters to score freely as Dean Elgar made a majestic 185, while Marco Jansen and David Bedingham slammed half-centuries.
"This wasn't a 400-run wicket. "The way the wicket was behaving, we conceded a lot of runs. It happens. We can't depend on just one bowler. It's important that the other three bowlers also do well. The way the opposition bowled, there's a lot to learn from that."
"Bumrah bowled well. We all know his quality. All he wanted was a bit of support from the other side, which he didn't get. To be honest, that happens. All the other three bowlers, they were trying really hard, bending their back, but it just didn't work out. Didn't happen the way we would have wanted to."
"But again, games like this teach you a lot of things, what you need to do as a group, as a bowling group. Hopefully, they can understand what went wrong, and then try and come back a little stronger from this game," said Rohit after the match ended.
Prasidh, who was handed a Test debut based on his abilities to hit the deck hard and using his tall height to extract steep bounce, had just 12 first-class matches under his belt. It was also his second first-class game in 21 months and Rohit stated the team will continue to show faith in him and his abilities ahead of the second Test at Cape Town starting on January 3.
"A little bit inexperience, of course, but he has got the tools to come out here and play the game. The bowlers that we have back in India, some of them are injured, some of them are not available. So we try to pick the guys who are available and we see the conditions that we are coming up against and try to pick the bowlers based on that."
"I completely agree that he has not played a lot of cricket, but there are three guys in their team as well who have not played a lot of cricket; they came here and showed what it takes. More than the work in the legs, I think it is in the mind. How you treat your mind and how you want to play the game is more important."
"If you keep thinking, 'Oh, I've not played a lot of Test matches, I've not played too many first-class games', it's not going to help. When you get an opportunity, obviously you should be grateful and come out and do the job for the team."
"Prasidh has been with the Indian team. Not around the Test team, but he has played a lot of white-ball cricket for us in the last two or three years, and he has shown that he has got a lot of potential. Obviously, it didn't work out well for him playing his first game, but we all were nervous when we played our first game. He would have been nervous as well."
"These things happen, but the guy definitely has the game to excel in this particular format. So we are going to back him because he definitely has the potential and he has got a great attitude as well about his game, which probably will hold us in good stead moving forward," he concluded.
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