Former India captain Virender Sehwag has slammed the Virat Kohli-led Indian cricket team for not doing enough to walk the talk in the ongoing five-Test series in England.
Sehwag pointed out that "best travelling teams" perform and not just sit in the dressing room and talk about their aspirations on the road.
The batting great's comments come after India lost the fourth Test in Southampton by 61 runs and eventually conceded an unassailable 3-1 lead to hosts England in series.
Notably, under-fire head coach Ravi Shastri had said Kohli's team have the potential to become the best travellers in world cricket after India thrashed England by 203 runs in the third Test in Nottingham.
A jubilant Shastri had not ruled out the possibility of India completing a comeback and winning the series after the morale-boosting performance at Trent Bridge.
However, India failed to make use of the momentum as another batting failure cost them the series in Southampton.
"Best travelling teams are made by performances on the ground and not by sitting in the dressing rooms and talking about it. One can talk whatever they want to talk about but unless the bat does the talking, they can never become the best travelling team," Sehwag told India TV.
India were in the driver's seat during the fourth test a couple of times but lacked the decisiveness to close out the match. England were reeling at 86 for 6 in the first innings before Sam Curran and Moeen Ali drove the team away from danger, helping them post 246 on board.
In the chase of 245, India were comfortably placed at 123 for 3 before they lost their last seven wickets for just 61 runs.
Very easy to say 'we're trying': Sehwag
Meanwhile, Sehwag also hit out at Kohli over his post-match comments that bordered around playing-well-but-not-well-enough-to-cross-the-finish-line.
The former opening batsman pointed out that it's time to put an end to giving excuses and start winning overseas, especially in Australia, England and South Africa where India haven't won a series in 10 years.
"We have already learnt the art of winning single test matches under Sourav Ganguly but still couldn't win a series overseas. So the problems are still the same," Sehwag said.
"But the difference then was that our batsmen used to score runs but we didn't have the bowling to take 20 wickets. Nowadays, we have the bowling to do that but not the batsmen who can score runs. We haven't scored more than 300 runs in an innings in the last few tests, except maybe once or twice.
"It is very easy to say that 'we are trying', 'we are not able to cross the line' or 'we will try in the next series' but we have been repeating these statements for a decade now and we still haven't won a series in Australia, England, and South Africa in this period."
India will now bid to earn a consolation win in the fifth and final Test, starting September 7 at Oval, London.
