Adelaide: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli’s never-ending technical problems against both pace and spin has set the alarm bells ringing as Indian batters capitulated twice in just 81 overs to lose the ‘pink ball’ Test against Australia by a comprehensive 10-wicket margin on the third day, here.
Australia maintained their tremendous record in day/night Tests and levelled the five-match series 1-1, bouncing back in style after their Perth debacle. They have now won 12 of the 13 day/night games they have played, losing only one pink ball Test in their history — against the West Indies.
It was shortest-ever Test between India and Australia in terms of balls bowled. Only 1031 balls were bowled out of a possible 2700 legal deliveries.
Starting the day at 128 for 5, Nitish Kumar Reddy’s (42) cavalier approach prevented a second successive innings defeat under lights at Adelaide as India were bowled out for 175.
Australia needed to score just 19 runs and they completed the formalities in just 3.2 overs.
India’s second innings lasted only 36.5 overs, with skipper Pat Cummins using the short ball effectively to claim 5 for 57. Scott Boland (3/51) inflicted early damage, while Mitchell Starc (2/60) chipped in with crucial wickets.
Such was the dominance of the three premier Australian quicks that Cummins didn’t even need Mitchell Marsh and Nathan Lyon to roll their arms in the second innings.
In fact, the specialist spinner and all-rounder bowled just five overs between them in the entire game.
After a facile 295-run win in Perth, Indian batting unit won’t be too amused to learn that they survived a total of 81 overs across both innings, which isn’t even a whole day of Test match batting.
Time running out for ‘Ro-Ko’ duo
It was a tale of two shoddy batting efforts with the two senior-most players Rohit and Kohli looking well past their best. Jasprit Bumrah gave it all but lacked a potent bowling partner at the other end.
For Rohit, things are getting increasingly difficult as he now has lost the last four Tests that he has captained.
In his last six Test matches, he has batted in 12 innings with just one half-century in Bengaluru. The only other innings where he crossed 20-run mark is the 11-ball-23 cameo in Kanpur against Bangladesh.
If one looks at the pattern of 37-year-old Rohit’s dismissals, it is very similar to Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Virender Sehwag’s way og getting out at the end of their careers.
These three were gifted with exceptional hand-eye co-ordination where they picked length at ease during their prime and reacted accordingly.
Now with reflexes slowing down, the reaction to the length is a split second slower and the way Nahid Rana, Taskin Ahmed, Tim Southee and now Pat Cummins have squared him, it speaks volumes about where he is going wrong.
He is still trying to cover the line of his deliveries but wrong judgement of length means is causing trouble. Number six wouldn’t solve his issues and he needs to again bat in top three.
For Kohli, the hundred at Perth now seems like “buffet runs” which came easily after KL Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal added 201 runs and by the time, he came in, India were ahead by 300 runs and the contest was as good as dead.
To his credit, he hung in there for a 100 but it was tired attack that he belted to signal end of a prolonged lean patch.
His problems with the fourth stump line has persisted since James Anderson exposed it in 2014.
The 26-year-old Kohli, back then, worked hard and managed around his technical deficiency of edging behind stumps. He would stand closer to off-stump to cover the line but at 36, the movements have slowed and the effects are showing.
If India need to be competitive in the remainder of the series, the two veterans need to figure out how to get over the slump or it might just be too late.
Pant’s dismissal ends the match
If India had to pull off a coup, it needed Rishabh Pant’s (28) excellence but Starc, the undisputed ‘OG’ of ‘pink ball’ Tests with 74 victims, bowled a delivery on length which the Indian batter jabbed at without pressing forward fully.
The regulation catch was duly accepted by Steve Smith stationed at second slip.
Reddy, who is time and again showing that positive attitude and big heart at times trumps technique, continued to defy the Australians.
In the first two Tests, Reddy’s commitment and ability to fight it out has been exemplary.
He hasn’t yet got a fifty but scores of 41, 37 not out, 42 and 42 show a lot of promise for the future. His seam-up wicket-to-wicket bowling can only improve if he stays around the national team.
It was difficult to survive the pink Kookaburra as Ravichandran Ashwin perished trying to hook Pat Cummins.
The Australian skipper then ended Harshit Rana’s misery with a short ball that could have knocked his head off and it didn’t take much time to polish off the tail.
