IND vs AUS 2nd Test: Australia have no defence
India romped to a six-wicket win with more than two days to spare, taking a 2-0 series lead, but Australia batters cut a sorry figure on a third day pitch that had no demons in the second Test
Ravindra Jadeja is brilliant. India are unstoppable. But just how bad are Australia? As the visitors lost the Delhi Test inside three days, the image of the famed Australian fighting spirit stood shattered.
This isn't an Australian team that fights. Rather, this is a team that rolls over and lets the opposition breeze past. They had ended Day 2 on 61/1 in 12 overs with Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne putting together a fine, positive partnership.
Day 3, however, proved to be very different. They lost Head off the last ball of the first over of the day and then proceeded to lose a wicket every 9.25 balls. You can't call it a great collapse as there was nothing great about this, pitiful seems to be a far better fit.
Australia’s last eight wickets fell for 28 runs in the space of 74 balls as Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin ran through the batting in quick time. No one expected batting to be easy but in being dismissed for 113 (31.1 overs), they earned the stamp of ineptness that is usually very hard to acquire.
In reply, India made a relatively comfortable way to 118/4 and sealed a six-wicket win. Cheteshwar Pujara (31*) and KS Bharat (23*) were at the crease in the end.
“Sometimes, you have got to keep it simple. You can’t complicate things too much,” said India skipper Rohit Sharma at the post-match press conference.
He added: “I could see that we were panicking a little bit (last night). We were changing fields too many times. Today morning, we wanted to tell our three spinners to just keep it calm. We didn’t need to change fields as often as we did last evening. We just needed to keep it tight and let the batters make that mistake. I could sense they wanted to play that way. That wicket was not one where you can come out and keep playing shots. You have got to find a balance.”
The Aussies can't put the blame on the pitch either. Jadeja and Ashwin bowled well alright but no delivery seemed to do anything majorly untoward off the wicket. The odd ball kept low, which is to be expected on a third day pitch, and one of them got Labuschagne, but the rest of it was pretty regular stuff.
The problem stems from how the Aussie batters seem to premeditate their shots – which is fine in T20s but spells death in Tests. They don't trust their defence and that in turn means they are looking to attack most of the time in the middle. They are looking to score off almost every delivery regardless of whether it is a good or bad ball.
While speaking to cricket.com.au in July, former Australia skipper Allan Border, who scored 1,799 Test runs in Asia at 54.5, said: “People don't seem to be prepared to go down the track, and defend even.”
And that is exactly how the innings played out. If you aren't prepared to disturb the length of the bowler, Jadeja and Ashwin will spin a web of such intricacy around you that survival will become very difficult.
The first-session collapse must have become even more difficult for Aussie fans to fathom after the Indian batters seemed to handle the wicket with a fair degree of ease in the fourth innings of the Test.
“Tehcnique is everything,” said Sharma. “When you are defending, there is technique. Saare ladke jo hai (all the boys), they have been playing from the grassroots level. This is something you learn from the grassroots level. When you are playing on such pitches, you need to have confidence in your technique.
“In Nagpur, we were playing on red soil. Here there was black soil. The sweep wasn’t a good option here. The safer option here was to step down. This is my thinking. Every batter has his own thinking and plays his own way. Whatever way you play, to have confidence in that is very important.”
The manner in which Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara batted showed that it was possible to not just survive on the wicket but also score at a fair clip. The only condition was that your shot selection needed to be spot on.
The two batters mixed caution with aggression, used their feet to the spinners and generally stayed positive in the middle without being overly aggressive.
Sharma’s run out after making a quick 31 came against the run of play but Kohli seemed to calmly settle in and soothe fears of an India collapse.
Todd Murphy then beat the former India skipper (20) in the air and on the outside edge to have him stumped. It was the first time Kohli has been stumped in his Test career.
Pujara and Bharat wrapped things up in quick time as India took a 2-0 lead in the series.
Australia, on their part, will rue the fact that they were ahead at various times in the first innings but were simply unable to press home their advantage.
“Disappointed, we were ahead of the game but we slipped,” said Cummins. “We need a review on what could have been done differently. Both games (first and second Test) were disappointing, this one in particular. We were ahead in the game and that doesn't happen often in India. This loss hurts.”