New Delhi [India], July 2 : Former Australian cricketer Tom Moody didn't mince his words while decoding India's "baffling" final XI selection for the second Test in Birmingham against England on Wednesday.

After surrendering to a five-wicket defeat in Leeds, India is in the race to nullify England's 1-0 advantage by changing their ill-fortune at Edgbaston. While trying to force parity in the five-match series, India made a couple of bold calls by lining up with three all-rounders, dropping Jasprit Bumrah and lining up with five specialist batters.

Moody struggled to fathom India's decision to "gamble" with five specialist batters and the fixation to line up with all-rounders, a strategy that has never worked. India has implemented the three all-rounder combination twice during their tour of Australia in the last two Tests and ended up savouring the bitter taste of defeat in each clash.

"India's selection for this test is baffling. No Bumrah is one thing, but to only have 5 specialist batsmen is a gamble. The fixation on all-rounders who are there to offer depth with bat and ball has never worked. Specialists are always going to offer more over a test," Moody wrote on X.

Among the host of changes for the second Test, India replaced Bumrah with Akash Deep and Shardul Thakur with young Nitish Kumar Reddy. However, the most eye-catching change turned out to be Washington Sundar, a spin-bowling all-rounder coming in for Sai Sudharsan, who made his debut at number three at Headingley.

India captain Shubman Gill offered a sneak peek into the blueprint that India will try to follow for the next four days in pursuit of a series-levelling victory. During the toss, Gill explained that Bumrah's absence comes down to their approach to managing his workload. While the inclusion of all-rounders stems from their twin tail-end collapses in the series opener.

"No Bumrah. Just to manage his workload. We did get a good break, and this is an important match for us. But the third Test being at Lord's, we think there'll be more in that pitch, so we'll use him there. We were tempted to play Kuldeep, but looking at the last match, our lower order didn't do well, so we decided to add some depth to the batting," Gil said during the time of the toss.

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor