Dinesh Karthik slams Gautam Gambhir for sending a message to Rishabh Pant that led to collapse

Former Indian keeper-batter Dinesh Karthik has slammed the Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir for sending the wrong message after the dismissals of Shubman Gill and Karun Nair on Day 2 of the Leeds Test against England.

Interestingly, India went on to get all out from 453/5 to 471 runs. Later, England produced a decent batting response, scoring 209/3 at stumps on Day 2. Jasprit Bumrah scalped all three important top-order wickets.

While Gill and Nair lost their wickets in quick succession, a sharp nip-backer from Josh Tongue led to Pant’s dismissal via LBW as he got out on 134 runs. His dismissal changed the course of the game completely for Team India.

“Very interesting that when a message was sent out to Rishabh Pant, it curbed his style of play. He was just very carefree with his stroke making, and yet the feeling is that a message was sent to tell him to calm down. It doesn’t work for certain players, I guess,” said Karthik on Sky Sports.

“As a coach, it’s completely understandable when you want to get a message across to the batter. But over time, you realise, for certain players, how you send that message becomes very important, what is the tone, what is the language used that gets the best out of the batter,” he added.

“Maybe with Rishabh Pant, there needs to be a different way in which you get things done,” said Karthik.

England Playing XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir

India Playing XI: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna

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