Former Indian wicket-keeper bat Dinesh Karthik highlighted that newly appointed India’s T20I captain Shreyas Iyer looked disgruntled, angry and disappointed after the visitors suffered a 125-run loss against England in the third T20I at Trent Bridge, Nottingham on Tuesday.
After India’s loss, Iyer admitted it was an atrocious performance from his team. India was skittled out for a mundane score of 76 runs, which is their second lowest total in T20Is. India was also handed their biggest T20I loss by England.
Karthik said Shreyas Iyer is a vital cog in India’s T20I team and he is going to hold the key in the batting order. Iyer returned with scores of 68 and 37 runs in the first and second game of the series respectively but was dismissed on an innocuous delivery in the last match.
“Yes, India did not bat well. Probably one of the worst batting performances in a long time. But it was interesting, maybe odd, you can say, for the captain to come quite hard at the batting unit. He used the word atrocious to describe their batting, he used the word awful as well. You could see how disgruntled, a little bit upset he was, and he must be angry, understandably so, but knowing Shreyas Iyer, he has to to come back because he is such a key member in that batting unit, that if he scores, the team looks different, as well have seen with PBKS (Punjab Kings). He is such a critical component to this batting order as well,” Dinesh Karthik said on Cricbuzz.
Karthik slammed India’s batting performance, noting that none of the batters could even score 15 runs in the third T20I.
“What’s happening to Team India? Four of the last five matches have been lost, we are the world champions at the moment. The pitch was probably a little slow, but you expected 200 to be the par score, but we felt India, could have, should have chased that down,” Dinesh Karthik said.
“But barring that opening partnership where there were a couple of sixes, where we thought, ‘Alright, we are looking good here’. But once the openers fell, things changed. India had a collapse, not one player even got to 15. Their worst ever loss in T20Is, the world champions are finding it hard in England at the moment. India have a lot of work to do, and a lot of questions will be asked,” he added.
The fourth T20I between England and India will be played at Bristol, County Ground on Thursday.
