Legendary India batter Sunil Gavaskar criticized the Indian team for lack of practice after the tourists suffered an innings defeat to South Africa in the Boxing Day Test at the SuperSport Park in Centurion on December 28, Thursday.

| SA vs IND, 1st Test Day 3 Scorecard |

Conquering the final frontier remains a dream for the Indian team after they were outclassed by the hosts, who looked better prepared for the 2-match Test series. The much-anticipated Boxing Day Test match ended within 3 days as the visitors were annihilated by the Proteas to go 0-1 down in the series. In India’s 1st innings, KL Rahul led the charge with the bat against a fired-up South African pace attack as he played a valiant knock of 101 runs to take India’s total to 245 in the first innings.

However, South Africa went on to post a mammoth total of 408 runs on board with Denn Elgar’s 185-run knock and Marco Jansen’s crucial contribution with 84 runs. India were bundled out for a mere 131 runs in their second innings, with Virat Kohli being the lone warrior with his 76-run knock.

Gavaskar, while speaking on Star Sports, expressed disappointment with the Indian team’s readiness for the 2-match Test series. He emphasized the importance of playing practice games ahead of an overseas Test match.

“The reasons are straightforward, you didn’t play any matches here. If you straightaway play Test matches, it doesn’t work out. Yes, you sent the India A team. The India A team should actually come before the tour,” Gavaskar said.

India had played intra-squad games ahead of the Test series. However, Gavaskar deemed it not good enough to be Test series-ready as it’s not played with the same intensity. Gavaskar reckoned that the team would have been more adept with the conditions had they played practice matches against the South Africa A team.

“You need to play practice matches after coming here. Intra-squad is a joke because would your fast bowlers bowl extremely fast to your batters, would they bowl bouncers, as they would be scared about injuring their batters,” Gavaskar added.

It looked like the Indian team and the hosts were playing in completely different conditions, both in terms of batting and bowling. The batters meekly surrendered to South Africa’s pace attack, led by Kagiso Rabada. The Indian bowlers couldn’t maintain consistency with line and lengths against the South African batters. India will take on South Africa in the 2nd Test match on January 3.

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