India were fired for 109 in their first leg and then 163 in the second leg as Australia advanced to the World Test Championship final with a crushing victory from nine wickets on the third morning.
Despite the loss, India still lead the four-game Test series 2-1 and have already retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
“Actually, the batters haven’t done justice to their skill. If you look at the Indian wickets, you’ll find that it was the Indian batters who retired, playing a few strokes anticipating that’s what the pitch is going to do,” Gavaskar said.
“If you look there is a lack of confidence because in the first two matches they didn’t get any points apart from Rohit Sharma who got a nice hundred in Nagpur. When you run out of points , there’s just that bit of hesitation in their And you can feel they felt for the deliveries.
“They couldn’t get down the pitch as much as they should have. They let the pitch overtake them. It was the pitch that started playing in their minds, even in the first set, but more so in the second run,” he added.
Gavaskar said India were down 60-70 runs in the first inning after opting to strike first.
“The field started talking in the first hour, so it wasn’t going to be easy, but if we had gone 160-170 in the first innings, it could have been the difference,” the big hitter said.
Marnus Labuschagne was dealt two lives – on 0 and 8 – in Australia’s opening rounds of the Indore Test. The batter played on a “no ball” from Ravindra Jadeja, before India erred by not opting for a DRS.
Asked about the no ball, Gavaskar said: “If you look back you would say that’s probably what cost India the game because after that they (Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja) sewed a partnership of 96 while India was fired for 109.
“So I think that was probably the turning point. That no ball cost India the game.”
The fourth and final Test in the series will be played in Ahmedabad from March 9.
(With PTI entries)
