ML Jaisimha, the former India opener and one of Sunil Gavaskar’s boyhood heroes, used to call cricket a lonely game. It is a team sport, but when a batter is at the crease, against a bowler and 10 other fielders, he is a lonely person out there in the middle. When a fielder is positioning himself underneath a skier, he is a lonely person in the field. As Pat Cummins dismissed Rohit Sharma with a beauty during India’s second innings at Adelaide Oval and the India captain started to trudge off the field, he looked the most lonesome person in the world. Runs have deserted him. His captaincy is under the scanner.
‘Big boys play at night’ was the catchphrase for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. India lost the second Test against Australia at night. On Day 1, they allowed the hosts to saunter to 86/1 in the night session after being bowled out for 180 in their first innings. On Day 2, the tourists lost five wickets in the night session in their second innings to decisively hand over the advantage to their opponents. In between, Travis Head had run India ragged, feasting on Harshit Rana’s freebies and capitalising on Rohit’s reactive captaincy. The decision to remove Jasprit Bumrah from the attack when the southpaw was new to the crease defied logic. It was inexplicable.
Did India lose the Adelaide Test due to Rana’s poor bowling and Rohit’s ordinary captaincy? No. The team has been struggling to put runs on the board and that is their biggest problem. It happened in the home series against New Zealand, in the first innings in Perth, and then in Adelaide. 487/6 declared in the second innings in Perth was an aberration.
Pink-ball Test is a part of the Australian cricket calendar and it is tokenism. But pink ball or red ball, first innings runs are important in Test cricket and India have been seriously lacking of late. “When you come to Australia, I feel the best chance of winning a Test match is by putting runs on the board,” Rohit said at the post-match press conference. “When we play in India, we are trying to play in very difficult conditions and that is what we wanted. It’s not by anyone else’s choice. It was our choice and we knew that the big-scoring games were not going to happen. But whenever we travel abroad, the conditions are there to score runs.”
Make no mistake, Rohit and Virat Kohli’s careers have entered the twilight zone. This team is heavily dependent on Yashasvi Jaiswal to put on a big total. Down the order, the onus is on Rishabh Pant and although the wicketkeeper-batsman continues to reinvent the wheel, he hasn’t scored big in this series yet. Shubman Gill has all the talent in the world, but he gives the feeling of a ‘happy flower’ (to borrow it from Pep Guardiola) batsman, content with eye-catching 30s and 40s. His highest score in a Test outside Asia is 91. His Test average in SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) countries is 25.
Can India turn things around in Brisbane? Of course, they can. But the batsmen will have to show more application. The sooner they put this defeat out of their system, the better. India bounced back from 36 all out in a pink-ball Test in 2020-21. Ravi Shastri, then head coach, ensured that there was no trickle-down effect. Gautam Gambhir will have to do a Shastri now.
5@5: Is Brisbane the last roll of the dice for Rohit? 1-1 and all to play for https://t.co/CcV6KPPWE1
— RevSportz Global (@RevSportzGlobal) December 8, 2024
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