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Dinesh Karthik, the experienced Indian wicketkeeper-batter, expressed his dissatisfaction with India captain Rohit Sharma's 'defensive' strategy on the fourth day of India's first Test against England. Karthik criticised the Indian team's cautious approach, particularly at the start of the day. While he understood the need for a more conservative game plan against a well-set Pope, Karthik highlighted a missed opportunity in applying pressure on England's lower-order batter, like Tom Hartley.
He suggested that spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja could have benefited from having more attacking field placements to pressure the tail-enders, potentially altering the course of the game.
"India have been too defensive. I can understand being defensive to Pope but to Tom Hartley, Jadeja and Ashwin should get attacking fielders and not so many sweepers," Karthik said on JioCinema.
The fourth day began with England at 316/6, and Ollie Pope eventually notched up 196 runs, setting India a challenging target of 231.
Meanwhile, Former England captain Michael Vaughan criticised Rohit's captaincy and labelled his leadership as 'average,' highlighting his inability to counter England's Ollie Pope, who was proficient in playing sweeps and reverse-sweeps.
"I thought Rohit Sharma's captaincy was very, very average. I thought he was so reactive, I don't think he manoeuvred his field or was proactive with his bowling changes. And he didn't have any answer to Ollie Pope's sweeps or reverse sweeps," Vaughan wrote in his column for The Telegraph.
"The greatest spinner I've seen, Shane Warne, would go around the wicket and get the player to sweep the leg side and say good luck trying to do that. I didn't see that any of that from India.
"It was just all too easy. The way that England play, they will always score boundaries. And by spreading the field, Sharma was basically saying that his bowlers' best balls would still go for one," he added.
England defeated India by 28 runs in the first Test in Hyderabad and took a 1-0 lead in the five-match series.
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