Adelaide Test: Australia find their best to level series
India batters cave in again as the hosts win by 10 wickets on the third morning, make it 8-0 in pink-ball Tests at the venue
Adelaide: It was either going to be a day when we would all marvel at the madness of Rishabh Pant or one where we would all go home early.
And when Mitchell Starc sent the left-hander back in the first over of the day, the writing was pretty much on the wall — we were going home early. India never recovered and lost their last five wickets for the addition of just 47 runs in 12.5 overs.
Australia skipper Pat Cummins was the star of the second innings — recording figures of 14-0-57-5 — and that should worry India even more as they go into the third Test, starting at Brisbane on December 14.
Australia came out to bat needing 19 runs and finished the job off without fuss. The match which had started with so much promise for India had ended in a whimper.
How does one go from a 295-run win in Perth to a 10-wicket defeat in Adelaide? Well, that is the game but there’s no doubt that India got a lot of things wrong in this match. Starc was brilliant in the first innings and his 6/48 destroyed India. Australia then got the runs on the board thanks to Travis Head’s brilliant 140 and it was something India simply had no answer to.
Bowling coach Morne Morkel had on Saturday spoken about how the bowlers were really able to execute their plans but the batters were perhaps guilty of not doing that. They got knocked over for 180 and 175 and failed to make the Aussie bowlers work hard enough.
“Great to level the series,” said Cummins. “I think this week we were back to our best. That’s the kind of team that I remember and how we want to play our cricket, so really satisfying.”
Many experts reckoned that India were just unable to cope with the pink ball as well as the Aussies did and that was a huge factor in the match.
“I wouldn’t say it’s lack of experience. It is what it is. You know when you come to Australia, you have to play a pink-ball Test,” said India skipper Rohit Sharma. “There is no doubt about it. It’s just that we didn’t play well enough and Australia played better cricket than us and they won the Test match. Why did we not play well? Of course, there are a lot of things that we need to look into in our game, our plans and the stuff we do during the game.”
India’s energy levels during the game weren’t where they would like them to be either, especially when compared to Perth, and that is something the team management should think about as well.
There is a short turnaround time to the next Test in Brisbane and Cummins has said that Josh Hazlewood’s recovery is on track as well.
“Josh will have another bowl tomorrow, so he’s all on track. It’s all gone to plan so far. So, fairly confident he’ll be right for Brisbane. We’ll know more in the next couple of days. And yeah, if someone needs to make way, they’ll be pretty unlucky,” said Cummins.
But India remain confident of bouncing back. This hurts but it is not something Rohit and Co can’t fight through.
“Firstly, it’s not a scar,” said Rohit. “It’s just that we’ve lost a Test match. We didn’t play well enough. It’s important in this short time that we have before the next Test just to figure out certain things with our own selves about if we want to bat, how we want to bat and if we want to bowl what lines and what lengths and what kind of field placements we need to have.”
He added: “It’s still one-all. There’s plenty of things left in this series still. And there’s definitely a way for us to get back into the game and we need to find that within ourselves how we need to do that. There are a lot of individuals in that dressing room who have played a lot of cricket, won a lot of games, have come back from difficult situations in the past. So, we hope that everyone stands up to that challenge and takes the team through.”
For now, India will need to learn their lessons from Adelaide and make sure not to repeat the same mistakes in Brisbane. That is the idea, but as Adelaide showed us, there is a big difference between ideation and execution.
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