Former Indian batter Mohammad Kaif questioned the Indian team for not finding Sonal Dinusha’s weakness in the second Test match against Sri Lanka at Colombo. Dinusha scored twin centuries in the match, scoring an unbeaten knock of 133 runs off 264 balls in the second innings. Furthermore, he scored 103 runs in the first innings as he batted at the top of his game.
The left-hander turned out to be a thorn in India’s flesh throughout the series. The southpaw amassed 420 runs in two Test matches at a stunning average of 140 and ended as the highest run-getter of the series.
Kaif highlighted that India has six to seven experienced coaches in their set-up but they could not find Dinusha’s Achilles Heel.
“Every batter has a shortcoming somewhere. You need to find where the shortcoming is. I am not talking about Gill. I am talking about the entire bowling unit and even the coaching staff. Everyone sits together and discusses that he scored a hundred in Galle, and where we can trap him when he comes now. Tactically, I agree that they attacked less, the field was opened up yesterday, and the drive ball wasn’t bowled,” Mohammad Kaif said on Sony Sports.
“Saransh Jain had dismissed him with that after his hundred. Mohammed Siraj had bowled a full ball, and he left it because he doesn’t like playing the drive. He doesn’t like playing shots there. You are talking about India. It’s not a club match that you got late. A video analyst is sitting, a stats person is sitting, and six or seven coaches are sitting,” he added.
Kaif added that Indian bowlers lacked experience to bowl on the fifth day’s pitch and they had also never bowled to Sonal Dinusha before the series.
“Our modern young bowlers play very rarely on such a pitch. They don’t play on the fifth day. A Test match doesn’t go that long. So they also don’t know how to tackle it, and we have not seen this batter. Assuming you get Joe Root, Ravindra Jadeja has bowled against him, so you can plan,” he said.
India won the two-match Test series against Sri Lanka by 1-0.
