“With Bat, A Lot Of Work To Be Done”: Zaheer Khan On India’s Performance In 2nd Test

New Delhi [India] : Former speedster Zaheer Khan raised concerns about India’s batting after the hosts managed to level the ongoing series against England at 1-1.

Apart from Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal, India’s batters struggled on a surface that proved to benefit the batters.

In the first two days, when the ball didn’t spin and came quite nicely to the bat, only Jaiswal was able to capitalize on the opportunity and score a stunning 209. When the pitch started to play all sorts of tricks on the batters, Shubaman rose to the challenge and raised bat for his third Test ton.

In a conversation on ‘Match Centre Live’, at the end of the 2nd Test against England in Visakhapatnam on Monday, JioCinema and Sports18 expert Zaheer Khan, analysed India’s batting performance.

“If you are one down in the series, you need that aggression, fight and belief to make sure that it is 1-1 after the end of the game. And I think Rohit was able to bring out those individual performances from the players. There are a few concerns when you look at the team – batting is something that they will be talking about because under these conditions, on this sort of a surface, we have seen India do better. You look at England’s second innings, there is only one half-century and they still managed to get close to 300. That is what collective effort can do. We have seen two brilliant innings – Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, but with the bat, there is a lot of work to be done,” Zaheer said.

In the bowling department, the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Jasprit Bumrah rose on the occasion and produced phenomenal spells with the ball.

Zaheer praised Rohit’s role as a captain in India’ success with the ball and said, “On the bowling front as well, you had the brilliance of Jasprit Bumrah. On this kind of surface, you feel that your spinners were at times under pressure, and because of that they needed the help from the batters. So, to control all these factors – this is where the captain needs to come into play, and Rohit has been superb when it comes to all these factors and situations.”

India and England will now head to Rajkot to play the third Test on February 15.