England vs India: Virender Sehwag blames batsmen for India's ODI series defeat

The Indian team lost the 3rd ODI to England and that is their first defeat in 10 bilateral ODI series’. Virat Kohli and the team management had well in advance hinted that they will use this as an opportunity to test the firepower in their bench. They got off to a really good start in the series, beating England all ends up in the first ODI but the home team served them just that in the next couple of matches to take the series honours 2-1.

At Leeds, Kohli made three changes in the line-up adding Dinesh Karthik, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Shardul Thakur for KL Rahul, Siddarth Kaul and Umesh Yadav. When the Indian batsmen were out on the 22 yards it appeared as if the wicket was really sluggish, batting was difficult, runs weren’t coming easy. They struggled for all the 50 overs and could only manage 256 runs. It was a total that would challenge a team like England only if they lost a flurry of wickets.

That didn’t happen and the Indian bowlers had an extremely ordinary day out. As a result, the home team won the match with 8 wickets in hand. There has been a lot of criticism with regards to the team selection and the batsmen being irresponsible. Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag feels this loss is on the batters as they posted an under par total and were clearly 30-40 runs short of being competitive.

“India lost because they didn’t score runs. They were 30-40 runs short of putting up a challenging total. The batsmen could have done a better job, be it anyone, Dhoni, Kohli, Rohit or Dhawan, either should have hung on to score runs so that the bowlers could apply pressure in the chase. I blame the batsmen for this loss,” Sehwag told IndiaTV in an exclusive interview.

Virender Sehwag critical of Dhoni’s knock

MS Dhoni, in particular, spent enough time in the middle but found it really tough to get going. When someone of his stature plays 66 balls the team expects him to make the best out of it in the last phase of the innings. However, Dhoni got out in the 46th over and couldn’t accelerate the Indian innings. Viru was critical of the kind of knock he played and for failing to stay there till the end.

“If Karthik and Dhoni could have hung on till the end, the outcome could have been very different. I feel that Dhoni is not the same person that he was before. Age is surely catching up. He used to take the responsibility to take the match till the end. He could have converted the many dot balls he played into runs,” Sehwag said.

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