HYDERABAD: India’s coach Rahul Dravid opined that they shouldn’t have allowed England to set a huge fourth innings target on a turning track. Set 231 to win, India crumbled for 202 and lost the first Test by 28 runs on Sunday.
The vastly experienced spin trio of R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel fared poorly in comparison to debutant Tom Hartley, a rookie from Lancashire and the left-arm spinner’s probing spell that fetched him impressive returns of 7/62, proved decisive. “In the fourth innings, it’s always going to be challenging in India to score 231. The pitch was turning. It took a truly exceptional innings (by Ollie Pope) to get us to chase that amount of runs,’’ said Dravid. “To me, that was the difference in the game. The third day where Ollie came out and played a fantastic innings set us back. He played a lot of high-risk shots but executed them superbly and that’s an incredible innings on a wicket like that.”
