Everybody drops catches: Gambhir after England beat erroneous India in Test

Leeds: Head coach Gautam Gambhir understandably appeared morose as his transitional young Indian team, despite having five centurions, contrived to suffer a five-wicket defeat in a breathtaking opening Test against England here on Tuesday. A major reason behind the stinging defeat was the five dropped catches, the most by an Indian team over the last five years.

Gambhir did appear peeved at another defeat in his regime, but he defended his wards, saying every team makes mistakes and he’s confident they will learn from the errors and emerge stronger. “Everybody drops catches,” the combative coach shot back in the post-match press conference when asked about it. “The best fielders in the world have dropped catches.”

After being asked to bat first on a batting beauty, India were in a great position to score close to 600 after Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant scored centuries. But a middle and lower order collapse saw them being bowled out for 471, which eventually proved inadequate. A similar collapse happened in the second innings too, and Gambhir admitted they erred in failing to shut the door on England while batting.

“So, we had a chance that if we had scored around 600 runs in the first inning, then we would have been in a situation where we could have dominated. But then these things happen. The good thing is four of our batters scored centuries, with a total of five coming.”

Gambhir said it was disappointing to see the bowlers throw away their wickets while batting but felt they would bounce back stronger in Birmingham.

“First of all, it's not that they were not applying themselves. Sometimes people fail, and that's okay. I know it is disappointing. I think they are more disappointed than anyone. Because they knew that we have the opportunity (to score 600) like I just mentioned. If we could have caught 575 in the first innings, we could have dominated from there.”