"No wonder it was 4-1"- Geoffrey Boycott slams England's bowling composition after thrashing at the hands of India
Former England cricketer Geoffrey Boycott wasn't impressed with the bowling resources England had in their 4-1 Test series defeat against India.
According to the former cricketer, the visitors took a massive gamble by taking inexperienced spinners to the Indian shores despite the hosts over the years known to be quality batters of spin. He was particularly unimpressed with the returns of speedster Mark Wood.
In his column for The Telegraph, Geoffrey Boycott wrote about England's bowling:
"It wouldn’t frighten anyone: two raw kids in Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir with little first-class bowling as spinners, an ineffectual fast bowler in Mark Wood who just bangs the ball into the track with little movement, a great seamer in Anderson who was used sparingly because he is at the end of his career and an all-rounder Ben Stokes who was unfit to bowl until a bit in the last Test. No wonder it was 4-1."
Boycott claimed that Wood's pace wasn't enough to trouble the Indian batters as he looked to bang the ball into the surface. The former cricketer feels pacers who focus more on nipping the ball around and using conventional swing and reverse swing are the ones who find success in India.
England were lucky Virat Kohli was unavailable: Geoffrey Boycott
Geoffrey Boycott felt England were not smart enough to understand that India's quality batters would have always exploited the inexperience of the opposition spinners.
Boycott shed light on how even in the absence of experienced batters like Virat Kohli, the hosts managed to dominate the England spinners. He stated:
"Inexperienced kids were never going to outbowl experienced Indian spinners in India. If anyone thought that then it was daft, wishful thinking. England were lucky that Virat Kohli was unavailable for all the series and KL Rahul only played one Test."
Boycott was not impressed with young off-spinner Shoaib Bashir's bowling and expressed his doubt on how the England spinners will develop, given that some of them may not play a lot of first-class cricket.