India suffered a humiliating whitewash in the home Test series against New Zealand by a 3-0 margin. It marked India’s first Test series defeat at home since 2012 and first whitewash in a home Test series since they started playing Test cricket.
This was much down to the Indian batters’ struggled while playing spin on spin-friendly pitches. Ajaz Patel, Mitchell Santner and Glenn Phillips wreaked havoc on the Indian batters and they failed to get going. India have really struggled to play spin on spin-friendly pitches in both ODI and Test cricket. Former World Cup-winning captain, Ricky Ponting, has blamed the IPL for Indian batters’ inability to play spin.
“Maybe it’s the IPL or how much IPL cricket they’re playing that the younger players are learning the game that way rather than the way that players did 15 or 20 years ago,” said Ricky Ponting.
Ricky Ponting was shocked to see India’s 3-0 loss against New Zealand
Ponting also added that the series result came as a shock for him given India’s dominance at home and the Kiwis playing without their main batter in Kane Williamson. He highlighted India’s vulnerability while playing spin on helpful tracks and stated that the modern Indian batters don’t have the skill of negative quality spin bowling as the earlier batters used to have.
Ponting also pointed out that the Indian batters are playing on good wickets on pace-friendly wickets in domestic cricket and that has really developed their pacers. However, the one down side is that it has really deteriorated the spin playing abilities of the current Indian batters.
Team India lost the first match of the series by eight wickets at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, then they suffered a 113-runs defeat in Pune and finally a 25-runs defeat at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The batting averages of the Indian batters have really gone down in Test cricket due to their inability to play spin on home soil.
