India suffered their third loss of the ongoing England-India series, thereby losing the 5 match Test series. In the fourth Test held at The Rose Bowl in Southampton, the Indian batsmen failed once again, losing the test by 60 runs after taking a first innings lead.
Former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin has attacked the Indian coaching staff, questioning their impact on the Indian batsmen and squarely blaming them for the defeat.
In an interview with The Times of India, Azharuddin said that India's batsmen made the same mistakes over and over again, and that the coaching staff should have helped them rectify their batting.
"We lost the series because of poor batting and our batsmen were committing the same mistakes throughout What is our coaching staff doing?" He praised Indian captain Virat Kohli for his batting but said that the Indian team cannot depend only on him to get the runs.
The former Indian batsman, who scored 625 runs in 9 Tests in England for India, said that the current series was India's best chance of winning a series in England as the bowling unit were taking 20 wickets.
Azharuddin did not comment on whether there were selection errors, but did say that the batting was very poor and did not respond to challenges laid forth by the English bowlers.
"I can't say if there was any selection error or not because I wasn't there to see what prompted the India team management. But the entire batting unit didn't respond well to the challenges. I have to praise the way Kohli batted throughout the series. But it boils down to one thing. It's a team game and all the other batsmen need to complement their captain," said the former Indian captain.
India plays their final Test of the series on September 7 at The Oval in London and reports suggest that India are mostly going to drop Ravichandran Ashwin and KL Rahul, while 18-year-old Prithvi Shaw could make his India debut.
