Former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir slammed Pakistan skipper Babar Azam for his extreme timidity approach against India at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Saturday. The Rohit Sharma-led side outplayed the Men in Green, as they went down without a fight in the game.
Experienced Pakistan batters Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan were cautious in their approach in the middle overs and did not take any chances throughout their innings, which eventually helped the Men in Blue to keep the pressure in the game.
Speaking on Star Sports, Gautam Gambhir feels that both Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam were batting in a similar manner and that Babar seemed quite uneasy about playing against India, which eventually led to the team’s failure in the game. The Men in Green managed to post only 191 runs in its first innings, despite Babar’s 50 runs off of 58 balls.
“Babar Azam has been extremely timid. Two batters cannot bat the same way in a partnership, one of them has to take chances. If you are playing for a fifty or your runs, you will get such results,” Gautam Gambhir said.
Pakistan’s captain Babar Azam and the in-form Mohammad Rizwan appeared to take a risk-free strategy against Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja rather than going aggressively after the Indian spinners, which led to Pakistan’s disastrous collapse in which they were bowled out for just 191 runs.
There Isn’t A Single Batter Who Can Take On The Opposition Attack – Gautam Gambhir
Gautam Gambhir went on to claim that none of Pakistan’s top three batsmen are equipped to stave off an attack from the opposition, with the team failing to hit a single six in the game. He said that Babar Azam’s shot selection against Mohammed Siraj was a horrible one and added that it was uncharacteristic of a player of his quality.
“Babar Azam has scored a lot of runs for himself but it’s been Pakistan’s history that they have liked to bat aggressively at the start, whether it was Shahid Afridi, Imran Nazir, or Taufeeq Umar, and they consolidate in the middle. However, here in the top three, there isn’t a single batter who can take on the opposition attack,” he added.
“It was an extremely bad shot. You don’t expect such a shot from a world-class batter. You had scored 50 runs and played nearly 60 balls, you knew there wasn’t much bounce and it was not the length where you could have played the late cut. You could have punched it,” Gautam Gambhir added.
Pakistan made a great start, but as India introduced their spinners, they slowed down significantly, and the Men in Green lost their final eight wickets for just 36 runs in the match Babar Azam-led side would look to turn things around in their next game against under-performing Australia in Bangalore.