The Indian cricket team had a nightmarish outing in the 1st Test between India and England at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad. Rohit Sharma and co. lost a Test match in Hyderabad for the first time in their history of Test cricket and this has certainly rung a lot of alarm bells.
India were playing without the services of Virat Kohli in this game and they dearly missed his legendary presence. England defeated India by 28 runs and India have now lost 2 of their last 3 Test matches at home.
England punched above their weight in this game and played exceedingly well in front of the Indian mainstream spinners in the form of Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel.
In this article, we take a look at 3 reasons why India lost the 1st Test between India and England in Hyderabad:
1. Lack of application from the batters
The batters of India didn’t play well in the 1st Test and did not display application at all. Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer and Yashasvi Jaiswal failed to get their bearings right when India’s backs were against the walls and this resulted in them losing out on this Test match.
India were overly dependent on the lower-order for runs and it was too big a task for the lower-order batters to take India’s sinking ship home.
2. Ollie Pope’s brilliance
We Indians always have the tendence of going ahead with the narrative that “India lost the Test match”, as opposed to saying “The opposition won the Test match”. England played exceptionally well in this game and it was led by the batting brilliance of Ollie Pope.
Pope played a match-winning knock of 196 runs in the 2nd innings and powered England to a commanding total of 420 runs in the 2nd innings. This pushed India to the walls and India failed to recover from the shift of momentum in this game.
3. Top-order collapse in the 4th innings
When India were cruising towards their target of 231, the partnership between Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal was brewing positivity. But when Yashasvi Jaiswal holed the ball towards the short fine-leg fielder, India were dealt with their first blow.
Shortly after that, Shubman Gill was dismissed for a duck and had to go back to the hut. Skipper Rohit Sharma showed intent and batted positively but was dismissed for 39 runs by Tom Hartley.
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