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'Best thing about Sri Lankan cricket is how they persisted with Marvan Atapattu and Kumar Sangakkara'
'Patience has to be shown with players as they are bound to deliver for the team.'
India's batting coach Sanjay Bangar defended Rohit Sharma's repeated failures in Test cricket, saying the Mumbai batsman deserves the same patience Sri Lanka had with their greats, Marvan Atapattu and Kumar Sangakkara.
Rohit, who was dismissed for one on the opening day of the ongoing fourth Test against South Africa, at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi on Thursday, was guilty of losing his wicket to a poor shot.
His outlandish shot-selection at a critical juncture was widely castigated as India ended the day on 231 for 7.
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Given the situation, Bangar's example of Sangakkara seemed out of place, as the recently-retired legend never failed so many times for Sri Lanka.
"There are certain times, wherein some players do take time to blossom. Best thing about Sri Lankan cricket is how they persisted with Marvan Atapattu and Kumar Sangakkara. Because they (Sri Lanka Cricket) stuck with them (Atapattu and Sangakkara) for a long period, they served the country for long with great distinction. Patience has to be shown with players as they are bound to deliver for the team," Bangar said, trying to defend Rohit, who has often put the team under pressure after rank-bad shots.
For the record, Sangakkara never went through a prolonged bad patch, nor did Atapattu after the first five ducks in six first-class innings, as he had six scores between 50 and 150 in the next 15 innings.
"Definitely, we make players aware about shot selection, whether tactical or technical. All these three things we make them aware about and where the deficiencies are creeping in," the former India all-rounder said, when asked about the batsman's repeated mistakes.
Bangar, in fact, took refuge in Rohit's ODI and T20 hundreds, stating that a player "hurts more than anybody" after a bad day in office.
"I want to say that the current lot of players that represents India are immensely talented and committed. They work very hard to reach where they are. Surely days like these, when players make mistakes, they must be equally hurting, most committed players do," Bangar added in defence of Rohit.
India’s batting coach termed the track as a typical Kotla pitch.
"I think this is a typical Kotla wicket. Low bounce, it's quite firm and played really well. All in all, a very good wicket to play Test cricket."
The only time Bangar seemed to protest was when asked about the team's failure to post 300-plus scores in recent times.
"If my memory serves me right, I think in the past three series we have scored 15 to 16 hundreds. As a touring team in Australia, this team has crossed the 400-run mark on all four occasions. After that even performances in Sri Lanka were enough to win Test matches for you as well as here.
"I think if we are scoring more than one run more than the opposition has done, I think, in the larger interest, result is coming. We definitely are getting the results that we want," Bangar begged to differ.
About an ideal first innings score, Bangar said batting in the first session on Day 2 would be key as the lower-order has been contributing of late.
"If we could bat one more session, it will be a very good effort. Positive thing that has emerged in this series during the past few matches is how the lower order has contributed. It used to be an issue earlier when lower order did not used to contribute much. But the manner in which lower order has improved from Sri Lanka, we should take it as positive step."