Severely critical of the Indian cricket team's poor show against England in the third Test, former captain Sunil Gavaskar said the old habit of getting complacent after a big win seems to have affected the side during the lost match.
India went down by 266 runs in the Southampton Test yesterday after the morale-lifting triumph in the second Test at Lord's.
"We might have helped England get back the momentum. Having beaten them at their headquarter in Lord's, we had them absolutely demoralised. But I don't know what we did in the five intervening days after that. We were sloppy on the first morning. We dropped Cook and let him get away. We need to look at our slip fielding and so many other things. There were so many misfields," the legendary opener told 'NDTV' from Southampton.
"It used to happen to Indian teams since 1930's but this Indian team is more professional. They should not be affected by complacency and should address the issues quickly."
"Zero resistance" is the word that Gavaskar used to explain India's abject surrender on the fifth and final day of the third Test while they had six wickets in hand.
"To lose a match like this showed zero resistance whatsoever. Apart from Ajinkya Rahane, who applied himself, none of the other batsmen could stay at the wicket. I must also mention that Jimmy Anderson bowled superb deliveries and the best batsmen in the world could have got out. But the disappointing aspect was no resistance," said Gavaskar.
On what made Rahane look a better batsmen than his colleagues, Gavaskar said, "It's the way he was playing. He was not trying to reach for the ball. He waited for the ball to come onto the bat and played with a straight bat. At the same time he was quick to seize on to any scoring opportunity."
"Some of the other Indian batsmen played with hard hands and tried to reach the deliveries. I believe two people could have saved this Test match. One was Murali Vijay for the kind of form he is in and Cheteshwar Pujara, who is a long innings man.
