'India cannot play the Bazball way' - Dinesh Karthik disagrees with KL Rahul's 'we will play aggressively' statement

Veteran wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik has said that India are not in a position to play ‘Bazball’ style cricket yet in Tests since the conditions in Bangladesh will not allow them to play that way.

Giving further clarification on the same, Karthik added that the ongoing Test match is being played on a slow surface and it is extremely difficult to score at over four runs per over on such wickets.

The Tamil Nadu stumper’s remarks came after India’s stand-in captain KL Rahul stated that they would be playing aggressively taking the WTC final qualification into consideration.

As the Test match carries on, the wear and tear will make things slow: Dinesh Karthik

“For me, as I said, it is very evident that these are kind of wickets that sometimes end up not producing a result. As the Test match carries on, the wear and tear makes it slow. If the quality of the batsmanship is not great, you will end up seeing batsmen make mistakes. If your temperament is strong, you won't need a great technique to stay at the wicket,” Karthik said on Cricbuzz.

“For starters, India cannot play the Bazball kind of cricket because right now, it's not a part of our DNA to do something like that. For KL Rahul to come out and say that they will play aggressive cricket basically means that they want to make a match out of it and get a result, knowing that the WTC final is around the corner and these two games become critical,” he added

"They want to press the accelerator and push the scoring rate. They couldn't do it today because the wicket is slow, and you have to bring a different tempo altogether and that will require a few players who bat that way,” he further added.

On Day 1 of the first Test, only Rishabh Pant showed some attacking intent as he played his natural game and scored 46 runs off 45 deliveries. His innings was a morale booster for India after losing their first three wickets inside 20 overs. Nonetheless, it was courtesy of Cheteshwar Pujara (90) and Shreyas Iyer (82*) that the visitors succeeded in reaching a safe position to finish the day’s play at 278/6.