India wouldn’t have lost the Hyderabad Test to England if Virat Kohli was their captain, according to former England skipper Michael Vaughan, who believes Rohit Sharma completely “switched off” during the game.
In a dominant position after taking a 190-run lead in the first innings, a Kohli-less India collapsed to a shocking 28-run defeat in spin-friendly conditions, handing England a 1-0 lead in the five-match series. It was India’s first Test loss at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.
Kohli missed the opening game and will also sit out the second Test in Visakhapatnam due to personal reasons.
“They missed Virat Kohli’s captaincy massively in Test cricket. Under Virat’s captaincy that week, India wouldn’t have lost the game,” Vaughan said on YouTube channel ‘Club Prairie Fire’.
Critical of Rohit’s leadership, Vaughan asked if the result in Hyderabad reflected the beginning of a decline for Indian Test cricket at home or whether the hosts missed Kohli and Mohammed Shami.
“Rohit is a legend and a great player. But I felt he just switched off completely,” Vaughan said.
Vaughan, in his column for The Daily Telegraph in London, had also slammed Rohit for not being proactive. “I thought Rohit Sharma’s captaincy was very, very average. I thought he was so reactive, I don’t think he manoeuvred his field or was proactive with his bowling changes.
“And he didn’t have any answer to Ollie Pope’s sweeps or reverse sweeps,” Vaughan wrote.
He added that India should have changed their tactics when Pope and the other English batters were smothering their bowlers with ease.
He also mentioned that Rohit should have employed more attacking fields and asked the English batters to go over the top.
“The greatest spinner I’ve seen, Shane Warne, would go around the wicket and get the player to sweep the leg side and say good luck trying to do that. I didn’t see any of that from India.
“It was just all too easy. The way that England play, they will always score boundaries. And by spreading the field, Rohit Sharma was basically saying that his bowlers’ best balls would still go for one,” he added.
After England were reduced to 163/5 in their second innings, Pope and Ben Foakes put on 112 runs for the sixth wicket. Pope was the last wicket to go down as England set India a target of 231 to chase down.
Under the new captain, India have won eight of the 15 Test matches they’ve played so far and lost five — two of which have come at home.
Kohli, on the other hand, has the best win percentage among all India Test captains who’ve led the charge in more than 10 games with 40 wins from his 68 outings.
Kohli had stepped down as captain after India’s tour of South Africa in 2022 after the team attained the world No.1 ICC ranking.
Written with PTI inputs
