'Why stick your hand out and hurt yourself?': Butt tears down on India's decision-making, says defeat is self-inflicted

Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt came down heavy on India following their 3-0 loss to South Africa in ODI series and maintained that most of the pain felt was self-inflicted.

India's 3-0 whitewash at the hands of South Africa in the recently-concluded ODI series was unexpected and unprecedented. Despite boasting of a strong side sans Rohit Sharma, the KL Rahul-led unit lost a young Proteas side with Temba Bavuma as their leader. Reacting to the series, former Pakistan skipper Salman Butt has quipped that this is a "sad time" for Indian cricket.

'Why stick your hand out and hurt yourself?': Salman Butt tears down on India's decision-making, says defeat is self-inflicted(TWITTER)

India lost the first ODI in Paarl by 31 runs and then went down by seven wickets in the next game. On Sunday, in Cap Town, they lost by four runs in a 288-run chase. Despite Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan scoring impressive 50s at the top and Deepak Chahar playing a whirlwind knock of 54 off 34 balls, the 'Men in Blue' just couldn't get over the line.

While analysing India's performance in a video on his YouTube channel, former opener Butt said the noise will only increase.

"This is just sad. Despite being such a good team, losing all three matches to a relatively inexperienced side playing without a couple of their main pacers makes for a really sad scenario. The noise surrounding certain topics will only increase after all this," he said.

When asked about what lesson India can learn and what went wrong, Butt said that decision-making was its poorest by the South Asian giants.

"Let things go on as they were. Why stick your hand out and hurt yourself? You made unnecessary and unreasonable changes. The team selection has been questionable. On this Tour where Pant played some outstanding knocks, he also played some shots that held no logical reasoning," Butt commented.

On the bowling attack, he opined:

"The selection of the bowling line-up was also very poor. If you have guys who can clock 140 kph, then what are you doing by playing Bhuvneshwar [Kumar] and Shardul Thakur. Moreover, the keeper was standing up the pacers This is not England where you can trap the batters on a wet pitch by bringing the wicketkeeper up to the medium pacers. These are questions that will have to be answered by the team management and the selectors."

Butt also commented on the choice of shots that Indian batters played and elaborated on why they couldn't get a single big score in the entire series.

"If you look at the good parts then Deepak Chahar bowled and batted well, and he single-handedly brought India close to victory. Before that, Suryakumar Yadav also batted well. He was set and if he continued to play calmly, then India would have won. He also got out to false shot. There was no need to play such an extravagant shot. The shot he got out to was not a good option and India eventually paid the price for it.

We got to see one fault shot after another at a time when they were least needed. That's the main reason for their downfall. Moreover, batters didn't capitalise after getting set. Not many large scores were made in this series. India has been top-class sin chasing especially when Virat Kohli plays long. But their middle-order does not have depth," he concluded.