It’s a measure of how much Australia have dominated under lights with the pink ball in Adelaide that the Gabba Test is now seen as an ‘easier’ game. Even when it was justifiably labelled the Gabbatoir – where visiting teams went to get slaughtered – the near-century-old venue in Brisbane never saw the hosts win more than seven in a row. If, as expected, Australia complete the formalities on Sunday, it will be their eighth successive pink-ball triumph in Adelaide.
Make no mistake though, Brisbane will be a formidable challenge for Rohit Sharma and his men, especially after crashing down to Earth with a thud in Adelaide. From the time the glory years began with the 1989 Ashes win in England, Australia have won 26 of their 34 Tests at the Gabba. Their first defeat in more than three decades came courtesy the heist engineered by Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant in January 2021. And it took a similarly implausible passage of play, from Shamar Joseph bowling with a broken foot, to beat Australia earlier this year.
And while India will take plenty of encouragement from what happened nearly four years ago, Adelaide has compounded questions about the team selection and coaching staff. On a skiddy surface, was Harshit Rana a better bet than Akash Deep? And with batting under lights in the second and third sessions the greater challenge, did moving Rohit Sharma down to No. 6 make sense?
Most surprising was Morne Morkel’s admission of his unhappiness with the lengths India bowled on the first evening. When India won in 2018-19 and again two years later, the coach-bowling coach duo of Ravi Shastri and Bharat Arun were proactive rather than reactive. Also, you wouldn’t hear a word of criticism of the players in public. There were stern words, often, in the privacy of the dressing room, but no attempt to pass the buck in front of the microphone.
More than one player has spoken of how Shastri’s relentless positivity and Arun’s more understated, but meticulous, attention to detail played a part in the remarkable turnaround from 36 all out in the last pink-ball Test India played in Australia. A team that’s winning every match it plays almost doesn’t need coaching staff. Things run themselves. It’s when things go pear-shaped on the field that the support staff have to earn their corn and back up the captain.
Indian cricket’s biggest crisis is obviously that leadership. Had any other player scored 142 runs in his last 12 Test innings, the Dear-John-Goodbye letters would have been penned by now. But Rohit Sharma is no ordinary player. He has led the side through a difficult transition, often brilliantly, and come into his own as a Test player after a delayed start to his career.
But when you’re 37 and your numbers start to fall off a cliff, it presents selectors with the toughest questions. Greg Chappell, India’s coach in a tumultuous phase between 2005 and 2007, alluded to it in his interview with RevSportz’s Subhayan Chakraborty. Deposing a captain in the middle of a series could have huge consequences for dressing-room morale. India won’t do that. But Rohit’s race, at least in whites, looks to be run.
A captain struggling with his primary skill can also be distracted on the field. That’s where the coaching staff and senior players like Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah will need to pick up the slack. If Rohit seems listless, they need to find ways to pump up the volume and get the team playing with the intensity they showed in Perth.
It won’t be easy. The Gabbatoir was called that for a reason, and if Mohammed Siraj thinks the Adelaide crowd was hostile, wait till he gets near the boundary in Brisbane. This itinerary was drawn up so that India would be hit hardest first up. They somehow dodged the blows and landed haymakers of their own in Perth, but Adelaide went on expected lines. They now need to survive part three of the horror trilogy in Brisbane to navigate what looks an increasingly difficult path to the World Test Championship final next summer.