Sunil Gavaskar feels Indian cricket team missed a 5th specialist bowler in Ranchi Test

Sunil Gavaskar feels that the Indian cricket team was short of a fifth bowler in the third and penultimate Test match against Australia which ended in a draw in Ranchi on Monday.

The former Indian captain was of the opinion that with Wriddhiman Saha and Ravindra Jadeja in good nick, the team can for sure afford to bring in a fifth specialist in the playing eleven to share the burden of its bowling attack.

“India’s batting has benefited from the fact that you have somebody like (Ravichandran) Ashwin, somebody like a Wriddhiman Saha at No 6, 7 and 8. And if Jadeja can come score runs as he has done in this series then I think it really makes sense to go back to five bowlers and six batsmen theory,” Gavaskar told NDTV.

He continued to say that India clearly missed a fifth bowler on Day 5, who wouldn’t have ripped through the opposition but he would have surely given just that little bit of break to the other hard working fast bowlers. Both Umesh (Yadav) and Ishant (Sharma) bowled their hearts out.

Gavaskar further praised duo Peter Handscomb and Shaun Marsh for their gritty innings to bail Australia out in the game.

“I think the way these two (Handscomb and marsh) batted, they denied India a win. It was good old-fashioned Test match batting. It didn’t mean that they were playing for a draw from the first ball of the game. It’s fine when you find that you are not in a position to win then it’s better to save the game and live to fight for another day. And that’s exactly what the Australians have done because if Australia would have lost today, it would have been an uphill climb. Now they have an opportunity to win the series,” he said