After Harbhajan Singh, Parthiv Patel blames "Rank-turners" in India for ICC WTC final loss

The Recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India saw only one hundred in first three tests.

India suffered another setback as they faced a crushing defeat of 209 runs against Australia in the World Test Championship Final at The Oval. With this defeat, India have missed out on another big ICC title in the last 10 years. In the last 9 ICC events, India played in finals for 4 times and tasted defeat in each one of them.

Team India head coach Rahul Dravid and captain Rohit Sharma have criticised the scheduling and preparations before the big game against Australia. Along with them, Former Indian Harbhajan Singh raised a valid point of playing in rank turners in India where the game gets finished in 2-3 days causing Indian batters problems in their application. 

Parthiv Patel endorsed Harbhajan's opinion

Now, Former Indian wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel has also endorsed Harbhajan Singh and questioned India's strategy of playing in the rank turners in their home conditions. Parthiv Patel tweeted, “With the way this WTC Final has ended, I feel one problem we have to fix is our batters spending sufficient time out in the middle. At home, we are used to wrapping up tests in less than 3 days on rank turners, and our batters don’t end up scoring the big hundreds. We need our batters to get used to spending long hours at the crease. And that’s what was missing in this final”.

Batting has certainly become tougher in Indian conditions in the last few years. Rarely we have seen a test going into 4th day in recent years. India have dominated their conditions playing in dry surfaces.

The recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy between two giants India and Australia saw only one century in the first three tests where both teams played in rank turners. Similarly, Harbhajan Singh also grilled Indian head coach Rahul Dravid after the game, where he asked about the dip in batters' average and playing rank turners hampering India’s chances outside the subcontinent.

In reply to this, Dravid cited that the World Test Championship has become tougher and each point is important so they don’t want to leave any room for the opposition. India needs to let go of their obsession with rank turners to find the right balance between conditions around the World. Before 2013, 90% of Test matches had lasted for 4 to 5 days in India.