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New Delhi: Former India spinner Sunil Joshi opined that India should have opted for five proper bowlers in the playing eleven against Australia at the Border Gavaskar Trophy, which India lost against them. He said that when batting takes a hit, it is bowlers that take the brunt of pressure, IANS reported.
"If you want to win overseas or even in India, and if you want to win a Ranji Trophy, you need five bowlers. You cannot go with four bowlers, and for me, if your six batters and seventh or eighth batters are not going to score runs, you then need five proper bowlers who can win Test matches for you by picking 20 wickets," Joshi told IANS.
"If you look at the amount of load Bumrah had in the five Test matches, he bowled above 150 overs. In case you'd have reduced his load to somewhere around 60 or 65 overs, his effectiveness could have been much more. In this series, every time it was Bumrah - even in the last Test match, Bumrah went out (due to back spasms) and we looked very ordinary," he said.
"Playing in Australia is hard; it's the hardest of all away tours, and you need to be really, really on top of your A game. In one of the previous Test matches, Bumrah went out for a brief period, and if I'm not wrong, he came back luckily. Everyone was concerned about his niggles, and it's bound to happen because he's stretching. He's also a human being, and he is giving every effort to every ball he bowls because it's effective.
"I am not saying that it's on batters or bowlers; it's the responsibility of the complete team. As a team, they have not done well and lost the series, so accept it. There's no point in pinpointing anyone. The top six batters needed to score and put up runs on the board. Then only you are allowing your bowlers to take 20 wickets. If you're not scoring runs in the top up front, it's tough for the bowlers also," he said.
Joshi also noted that the Indian bowlers' recovery on tour in Australia was also affected by the batters not batting long enough. "You look at how many times the bowlers and bowling unit spent time on the ground in the series. Did they get a proper two days of rest? No. They were almost bowling on the ground every day or for one and a half days. If you're bowling 15, 17, 18 or 20 overs, you can't have that intensity to bowl every one and a half days because the body will not recover on the field.
"That's because you're going to field for 90 overs as well, and that's a lot of toil on their bodies too. If you want to keep them fresh, then our batters needed to put up runs on the board and bat for 90, 120 or 140 overs. If that happened, they would have scored 400-plus runs, and that was missing," he concluded.