As India’s disastrous tour of South Africa came to an end, a 3-week old tweet of the BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has gone viral. Ganguly had posted the tweet after India’s emphatic win over South Africa in the first test match where they looked a far better and polished unit than the hosts.
Ganguly had tweeted that it would not be easy for South Africa to beat the visiting Indian side unless and until they play “out of their skins” and since the time the tweet was posted, India played 5 more games on the tour and ended up losing all 5.
Virat Kohli got ruled out of the second test match because of back spasm and that’s where India lost all the momentum. KL Rahul took charge of the test team for the second test and India couldn’t defend a target of 240 in the fourth innings despite the pitch offering help to the fast bowlers.
South Africa turned a corner thereafter and not only did they win the next test match to seal the test series 2-1, they then carried the momentum into the ODI series as well and whitwashed India by 3-0 in the ODIs.
Sourav Ganguly is being trolled for being overconfident
At the conclusion of the tour, the Indian fans on twitter dug out Ganguly’s tweet and it went viral. The BCCI president was trolled a lot for being overconfident after just one game. While some of India’s main players, including the captain Rohit Sharma himself, was not available for the ODI series, the Indian team was still expected to be competitive.
Great victory for Team India ..not surprised by the result at all…will be a hard team to beat this series..South africa will have to play out of their skins to do that ..enjoy the new year @bcci
Advertisement— Sourav Ganguly (@SGanguly99) December 30, 2021
A 3-0 result is something that even the South African fans were not anticipating. But the way India played, particularly the way their middle order played, was way below par for the standards that India have set for themselves in white ball cricket over the years.
The head coach Rahul Dravid, after the third ODI game yesterday, said that India missed some of their key players who could have provided balance to the squad. The likes of Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja, two of India’s premier allrounders were not there and India had to play the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur and Deepak Chahar at no. 7 in the three games respectively.
Although Shardul and Deepak showed good potential with the bat, India could have better battting depth if Jadeja and Hardik were available and Shardul and Deepak, rather than batting at no. 7, would have batted at no. 8.
