Sweep, reverse sweep, scoop and some more sweep: England have shown the world that Indian spinners can be bossed over in their own backyards. R Ashwin, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja struggled to contain runs against Ollie Pope, who scored 22 runs off the 48 England scored from reverse sweeps. As India lost the IND ve ENG 1st Test, head coach Rahul Dravid admitted that bowlers had no answer to England’s approach.
“We’ll have to counter that. I certainly haven’t seen it being done that (playing sweeps, reverse sweeps) consistently against that quality of bowlers. You’ve seen people try that before, and play some exceptional innings. But to be able to play it that consistently and that successfully without making that many mistakes, and maybe one or two odd mistakes, I probably haven’t seen it,” Rahul Dravid said at the post-match press meet after IND vs ENG 1st Test.
Before Ollie Pope pinned the Indian bowlers down, Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley too showed how it’s done. And even before that, Travis Head and Alex Carey had some success using the same reverse sweep approach.
However, Rahul Dravid hasn’t lost trust in the Indian spinners. But he admitted that they did not execute the plan well.
“We have to get more disciplined with where we pitch the ball. We will work on it and we will get better at it as we have some world-class spinners. It’s not the first time that they’ve been challenged. One of the good things about our spinners is that they’ve always come back,” Rahul Dravid said.
We will respond: Rahul Dravid
But off day of Indian spinners does not take away how well Ollie Pope batted. He scored 196 when England were 5 down. And Dravid wants Indian bowlers to respond in IND vs ENG 2nd Test in Vizag.
“It’s important that we respond. We need to come up with some plans and strategies and see how we can make him (Pope) play those shots from even more difficult lines. We need to be even more disciplined and meticulous with our execution because I thought our execution was a little bit off. Hopefully, in the next Test match if we get our execution right, then I hope he makes a mistake,” Rahul Dravid said.
