'Trick in England is to play late. He was trying to play the ball early': Gavaskar points out major flaw in India batter

India were unable to defend a target of 378 in the fifth Test, eventually losing the match by seven wickets with more than two sessions to spare on the final day.

India's bowling attack, particularly their pace battery, earned almost unanimous praise from the cricket world for how they performed in Test cricket during the captaincy of Virat Kohli with Ravi Shastri as head coach. However, that attack and its tactics have come under the scanner after India's defeat in the fifth Test against England.

Sunil Gavaskar acknowledged the fact that the England batters played extremely well. 

India had previously lost to South Africa in their tour of the country earlier this year, failing to defend targets in the second and third Tests as they lost 2-1. Against England, India had set a target of 378 at Edgbaston, which was well over the hosts' most successful Test run chase. However, they ended up getting there on a canter.

“It certainly is a cause of worry,” former India captain Sunil Gavaskar told Sports Today about the Indian attack's tendency to ship runs in the fourth innings. “This latest chase of 378 was a huge total. The way they did it with so much time to spare on the final day, they got the 120 runs in about 100 minutes or so. That is unbelievable batting,” he said.

Gavaskar also spoke about Virat Kohli's lean patch and said the star batter was trying to play the ball early in Edgbaston. He scored 31 runs across two innings.

"The trick to play in England is to play as late as possible. Then you are allowing the ball to its bit and then you are playing the ball. From what little I saw in the highlights, it seemed Kohli was looking to reach for the ball, trying to play the ball early," Gavaskar said.

"Therefore, he was not looking like he was in 2018 when he was looking to play it very late around the off-stump."

"This could possibly be his issue because he hasn't been among the runs. When you are not in form, you look to play almost every ball, hit each one of them, in a bid to score runs. Maybe that's something that can he look at.

"But the first mistake he is making is turning out to be his last mistake. Maybe he is not having the run of the luck at the moment," he added.

Gavaskar said that tactical mistakes may have been to blame for the defeats. He, however, noted that the batting in all three Tests were brilliant from the South African and English players.

“While this pitch (at Edgbaston) looked like a good batting pitch, the wickets in South Africa were not easy to bat on. Maybe we didn't try different angles. You can say that we should have gone over the wicket or round the wicket, made bowling changes from different ends. Those things were not tried enough is something that you could say.

“But every single time, you could see that the batter seems to have just that little bit more determination. The batters led by Dean Elgar in South Africa seemed to say that we are just going to hang in there. I am not trying to protect our bowlers but I do feel that they tried just about everything they could and just came up short because the batting was better on that day,” said Gavaskar.