Indian legend lashes out at underperforming Mohammed Siraj, says ‘should be dropped’

Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has slammed pacer Mohammed Siraj for his below-par performance in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy as the visitors continue to struggle. So far in the series, Siraj has scalped 13 wickets and ended wicketless in the first innings of the ongoing Boxing Day Test match. According to Gavaskar, Siraj should be dropped if he continues with his poor form.

Gavaskar slams Siraj

“I think Siraj, perhaps, needs a little bit of a break. In the sense, that I am not saying a break, he needs to be told that he is left out of the team for non-performance. There has to be a situation where you can’t beat around the bush. You need to be brutally upfront and say ‘look, your performance has not been up to scratch and therefore you are being dropped’. When you start talking about ‘rest’, players get the wrong ideas. They feel they don’t need to up their game,” Sunil Gavaskar told Star Sports.

So far in the series, the Indian pacer has best figures of 98/4 which came in the first innings of the pink-ball contest in Adelaide. In the ongoing Test match, he was easily tackled by the Aussie batters and went wicketless despite bowling  23 over. He gave away 122 runs in the process.

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India face late collapse

After bowling Australia out for 474 in the opening session of Day 2, India did not have the best of starts with skipper Rohit Sharma (3) falling to Pat Cummins in the second over. KL Rahul added 24 runs to his tally before being scalped by Pat Cummins. Virat (36) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (82) added a 102-run stand for the third wicket before the latter was the victim of poor running between the wickets. India closed the day at 164/5 with Rishabh Pant (6) and Ravindra Jadeja (4) in the middle.