Indian team has to learn the art of finishing 'away' Test matches

The Indian cricket team yet again failed to win an overseas Test series in the recent time after losing it against South Africa in January earlier this year. Last night, India lost the fourth Test match against England in Southampton which gave the hosts an assailable lead of 3-1 in the five-match series.

India lost this match by 60 runs but they looked completely in command at the end of day 2 of the Test match but it slipped away from day 3 onwards. India has been losing quite a few close Test matches since the start of this season. This was first seen during the South Africa tour where India lost the first and second Test match by 72 and 135 runs respectively. The story continued here as well after India lost the first Test match at Birmingham by 31 runs.

One of the major reason behind this is the continuous failure of most of the batsmen. Players like KL Rahul, Murali Vijay, Ajinkya Rahane and Shikhar Dhawan are consistently failing to leave a mark in the team to substantiate their selection.

Another player who is there in the list is Hardik Pandya. Though Pandya delivered as a bowler in the Trent Bridge test where he took a fifer. Apart from that, no noticeable performance came from his side. This is also leading to create a misbalanced playing XI that is taking the field for India.

Not only the batsmen who are playing are not delivering, but India is also facing the drawback of not playing a specialist sixth batsman that can help them chase targets in the third and fourth innings.

The bowlers are playing their roles well but it is now the turn of the batsmen who have to start delivering now to prevent India from losing such close embarrassing encounters which not only hurt the players but the fans as well.