Team South Africa celebrate a wicket during the Day 5 of the 2nd Test match between India and South Africa at ACA Stadium, Guwahati, India, on November 26, 2025. (CREIMAS for BCCI)Former India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin absolutely lambasted the India batters after their failure to perform in the South Africa series, leading to the hosts getting whitewashed by the WTC holders in their own backyard. This was India’s second whitewash at home after the New Zealand series back in 2024 and Ashwin said that it was due to the batters’ inability to play spin and not trusting their defence.
“It was absolutely shell-shocked pathetic batting. I have been saying this for the past 3-4 years that the players we have don’t attempt the sweep shot. When we lost in the New Zealand series, you would find that the New Zealand batters defended the ball by sweeping. Their degfence wasn’t their defence. Rather, their sweep was their defence. If you give them two deliveries, they would defend once and try a sweep or a reverse sweep. And they practice and are very very good at it,” Ashwin said on Ash ki Baat show on his YouTube channel.
“As a spinner who is encountering this, you need runs on the scoreboard. If you have 250-260 runs on the board, these sweeps can be blocked and you can even take a wicket with a good ball. If you are getting all out for 140, 150, 160 and you are behind in the game, you have to run to catch up. And when I say pathetic batting, there is no ability to trust the defence. Tristan Stubbs got out defending badly. But he played 400 balls in this Test series. Even if he had a bad defence, he was ready to back that. He didn’t have the greatest of defence but we didn’t have the ability to get past his defence. Eventually ended up making 94 runs.
“The fact of the matter is how are our batters playing good defence to make Simon Harmer earn his wickets? You tell me something, barring Rishabh Pant’s ball which bounced, how many of our batters actually had good defence? If there’s fault in your defence, you’ll play shots. Many a times, we are also at fault. When these batters take on spinners and keep on playing big shots, we keep on saying that’s the way to play, that’s his game. No bhaisaab, you have to play defence. All great cricketers have created their game around a solid defence. What is good batsmanship? Good batsmanship is mixing intent with defence. What is intent? When you can positively defend. I am harping on this that it is not about an individual I am talking about the failure to address our defence against spin. We are now probably one of the poorest spin-playing nations in the world,” he added.
Chasing over 500 in the final day of the second Test, the India batters couldn’t pose much of a challenge to the Proteas, losing wickets at regular intervals before skittling out for just 140 runs in their second innings, handing the Proteas a massive 408-run win.
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