Gavaskar & Tendulkar Feel Bowlers Behind Kohli & Co's

New Delhi: India skipper Virat Kohli and chief coach Ravi Shastri have often spoken about the need for bowlers who can dismiss opposition batsmen and hand the team the advantage. And former India skipper Sunil Gavasakar has echoed the same sentiments and believes that it is the bowlers who have helped Kohli and boys put up an impressive display in the Rainbow Nation.

“The thumping win in the one-day series over South Africa in South Africa has never been achieved before by previous Indian teams with far more illustrious names than in this team. Not that those teams did not have self-belief and confidence, for they held their own, but were simply not able to deliver the knockout punch. For Kohli that knockout punch has come from his bowlers, who have bowled superbly throughout this tour and destroyed the South African batting.

“Even in the Test matches it was the first time that the Indian bowlers took all 60 wickets to fall. It was just the batting in the fourth innings of the first two Tests that was unable to measure up to the South African attack, that too mainly because the skipper for a change got out early,” Gavaskar wrote in the Times of India.

“The new-ball bowlers have been superb and the spinners were such a joy to watch. To see the South African batsmen ducking under snorters from [Japsrit] Bumrah, [Mohammed] Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has made all the years of doing the same and watching other Indian batsmen doing the same melt away.”

Sachin Tendulkar has also praised Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal for their consistent show on foreign soil. “When it comes to batting, we speak about the number of runs scored but we are also winning matches because during those middle overs where the two wrist spinners (Kuldeep and Chahal) are bowling which is obviously heart-warming because one did not get to see wrist spinners much few months back. I think they have been bowling well in tandem. I think it is fantastic because that is something which the rest of the world is yet to figure out how to play them.

“They (rival teams) are trying to figure out what are the right options to score runs against them. What is the right option to survive. What are the options to – how do we block and those kind of things . But before they figure out we should try and win as many matches,” he said.

Tendulkar feels that with wrist spinners the advantage is that they can spin a web over the batsmen even on conditions not suited for them.

“I firmly believed that the wrist spinners can add lot of value as they are not dependant on the surface. It is about what you do in the air and you have varieties bowling leg-spinners as well as googlies. Of course, during our days, bowling doosras by off spinners was common,” he said.