Rishabh Pant’s Team India suffered their second-successive T20 loss, going down by four wickets to South Africa in the 2nd T20 in Cuttack on Sunday (June 12). After Sunday’s loss, India are now 2-0 down in the five-match series and must win the next game on Tuesday (June 14) in Vishakhapatnam to keep alive in the series.


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Former India opener Sunil Gavaskar was scathing in his analysis on the Indian side, blaming their bowlers. In the first T20 in Delhi, Indian bowlers failed to defend a 211-run target while in Cuttack, Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s 4/13 went in vain as Heinrich Klaasen powered SA to a win.


“The major problem is the fact that they don’t have wicket-taking bowlers in this squad apart from Bhuvneshwar Kumar. So, you take wickets and then you get the opposition under pressure. So, in both the matches, did anybody look like getting a wicket apart from Bhuvneshwar Kumar? He was getting the ball to move. That is the issue which is the reason why a total of 211 was something that they could not defend,” Gavaskar told host broadcasters Star Sports after the match on Sunday.



Spinners Axar Patel and Yuzvendra Chahal failed with the ball on Sunday as well. Axar bowled just one over and conceded 19 runs. Gavaskar also questioned the all-rounder’s promotion ahead of finisher like Dinesh Karthik.


“Definitely (Karthik should have come in ahead of Axar), there's no question about it. Sometimes, there are labels that you’re a finisher so you tend to think that he is going to come only after the 15th over or thereabout, ‘you can’t come in the 12th or 13th over’. And we have seen this happen in the IPL as well, a lot of teams have kept some of their big-hitters only for the last 4-5 overs when actually they can be sent in earlier as they have the ability to work the ball around,” Gavaskar added.


Axar only managed to score 10 off 11 balls while Karthik posted an unbeaten 30 off 21 balls as Team India managed 148/6 after batting first.