Former England captain Nasser Hussain has criticised Team India’s selection process in the ongoing second Test at Edgbaston.“Well, it’s a changing era, isn’t it? Obviously, you had Ravi Ashwin retiring, then you have Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Mohammad Shami not being available and not quite fit enough to be on this trip. So, if Ravi Ashwin was here, he would have played as the second spinner, if not the first spinner. Mohammad Shami—they missed that third seamer,” he said on Sky Sports.“There was a drop-off the other day at Headingley when they went from Siraj and Bumrah. The third seamer let them down. Shami never lets them down.“And that bowling attack that Kohli had—and Rohit Sharma to a degree—the seamers were wonderful and backed up by excellent spinners as well.”Bumrah, India’s best bowler but on a three-Test quota in the five-Test series, was replaced by Akash Deep, who will play his first Test this year. Batting all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy replaced bowling all-rounder Shardul Thakur, who scored only 1 and 4 in the first-Test loss in Leeds last week.Washington Sundar, the off-spin bowling all-rounder with 25 wickets and a batting average of 42 in nine Tests, has also come in to shore up the batting, which suffered late-order collapses of 41–7 and 31–6 in Leeds. Sai Sudharsan, who scored 0 and 30 on his Test debut in Leeds, was dropped, and Karun Nair was promoted to No. 3 in the order.Hussain also pointed out that India has hit the panic button after making three changes to their playing XI following the five-wicket loss at Headingley.
“So, I didn’t think there was a need to make as much panic as they have done, because they played a lot of good cricket at Headingley. They scored five centuries. At times, you know, Bumrah was unplayable,” he said.“It was the catching and the collapses. Those were the two areas of concern. And the collapses they’ve tried to put right by having batting depth without actually improving their bowling.“Bumrah is now added to the long list I’ve just given you of people not playing. And this is way off the side they had a year or two ago.”
