England vs India 2018, 2nd Test: Player Ratings
At the Mecca of cricket, England won the toss and decided to bowl. The first day’s play was abandoned due to heavy rain. Under overcast conditions and world-class display of swing bowling from the English seamers, the Indians got bowled out for a meagre total of 107.
On the contrary, the Indian bowlers could not extract anything out of the pitch under bright sunshine and the England batsmen capitalised on this advantage and secured a mammoth lead of 289 runs.
Yet again it was the same old story as the Indians never showed any sort of application to counter the prodigious swing and seam movement. In the end, India lost by an innings and 159 runs.
There is a lot of questions to be answered by Kohli and the team management regarding the team selection and constant chopping of the batting order. Here are the player ratings for the match...
Note: All the ratings are out of 10
India
1. Murali Vijay – 2
This was a pretty disappointing match for Vijay as he bagged a pair and continued his disastrous form.
He is not showing any sort of effort to concentrate and deny the English new ball bowlers an early wicket. There is a big chance of him getting dropped for the next match.
2. KL Rahul-2
His initial trigger movement before the release of the ball is causing a lot of problems for him. He is getting out to balls which he should have left alone and his inexperience in these conditions is not helping him.
3. Pujara-5
He had a nightmare start to his test with a horrendous runout in the first innings. In the second innings, he showed a lot of application and temperament but could not get a big score.
4. Kohli-5
Even though he had a poor test with the bat, the one thing that Kohli will regret the most is picking two spinners in seam-friendly conditions.
This is his first innings defeat as a captain and he will do everything in his power to avoid a serious defeat next time around.
5. Rahane-4
Once again, he just threw away his wicket after spending some time in the crease and might lose his spot in the team for the next match.
6. Pandya-5
He had a comparatively better match but still, he has to improve his batting a lot to cement his place as an allrounder in this team.
7. Karthik-3
His technique got exposed in both the innings of this match and might be replaced by Pant for th next match
8. Ashwin-7
He had a solid match with the bat and was the highest run scorer for India in this test. But could not contribute much with the ball under cloudy skies.
9. Kuldeep-2
It was a disastrous bowling performance from him. He barely bowled consistently in one area and offered the batsman a lot of freebies.
10. Shami-6
He as the pick of the Indian bowlers but still gave away one boundary ball per over.
11. Ishant-2
One of his worst performances in recent times. He sprayed the ball in all areas throughout his spell and was very expensive.