‘Virat Kohli come out and defended the wicket almost as if it’s a BCCI thing’-Alaister Cook and Andrew Strauss slam Indian captain

Virat Kohli

The pitch has been one of the talking points of the recently concluded Third Test match at Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad. 

The English experts have criticized the pitch as they thought that the pitch is not good to bat and the only spinners can get benefit out of it.

The other talking point of the match was that it got ended in only two days and with the loss England failed to register their spot as other finalist for World Test Championship in 2021.

Taking about the match visitors won the toss and decided to bat first but was not able to capitalize the momentum and bowled out on the small total of 112 runs.

But the English spinners bowled superbly to make sure that the host bowled out on 145 runs which means the host were leading only by 33 runs.

Which must have given confidence to visitors that they are back in the game but before they realize the Indian spin duo Patel-Ashwin made sure that England don’t cross more than 80 runs in their second innings.

At the end it was left to Indian opening batsman Sharma-Gill who made sure that men in Blue cross the line and clinch the victory with 10 wickets in hand.

And as the pitch became the talking point once again, India skipper Virat Kohli made it clear that there were no demons on the track. While he said that the game-ending inside two days was bizarre, Kohli termed the pitch as ‘very good’. He blamed the batsmen of both the teams for performing ‘under par’ against the good spin bowling.

“[It was] a very good pitch to bat on – especially in the first innings – and it felt like the ball was coming on nicely with the odd-ball turning. It was just, I would say, below-par batting from both teams. Our bowlers were much more effective and that’s why we got the result,” Virat Kohli said

However Former English skipper Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook completely opposed Indian skipper statements as they both stated that Kohli was being proactive of the groundmen by praising the track as they both believed that batting on those track was ideally not possible.

“We saw a stat that says this pitch has spun more than any other pitch in India. There’s been so many other balls that have gone straight on as well. So that means when it is turning, it is turning miles. When you see the highlights and the ball skidding on you, we don’t see the build-up: when the exact same ball is spinning miles,” Cook told Channel 4.

Virat Kohli’s come out and defended the wicket almost as if it’s a BCCI thing – it cannot possibly be the wicket. Yet it was so hard to bat on that today. So hard. Take the wicket out and blame the batsmen? We’ve got Virat Kohli, Joe Root, we have some great players of spin. Yes, we’ve got some people who have got to learn to play spin better, but we have got great players of spin also struggling. To me it’d be great to have that game with the red ball to see the difference when the ball is skidding on. Today trying to play properly, it was nigh-on impossible,” he added.