92 balls, 27 runs, 8 wickets – a nightmare under broad daylight and Indian cricket is in complete disarray.
On Saturday (December 19) yet again we felt why some wise men once termed Cricket as a game of unpredictabilities. Coming into this much-anticipated day-night Test in Adelaide, the talk of town was the “40-50 minutes” in the twilight period and how that phase of play can be a game-changer. Well, on Day 3 of the match, that freakish “40-50 minutes” came in the first season, which saw Virat Kohli & co. suffering severe consequences. Resuming from their overnight score of 9 for 1, the Indians were bundled out (with Shami retired hurt) for 36 – their lowest total in Test cricket.
No one saw it coming, especially after the fight we witnessed from most of the top-order batters in the first innings. In hindsight, after securing a crucial 53-run lead in the first innings, many pinned hope on the Indian contingent to bat Australia out of this Test match.
However, what followed was inexplicable in many ways.
It was indeed India’s worst batting performance ever in any format. The batsmen returned to the dressing room with scores of 4, 9, 2, 0, 4, 0, 8, 4, 0, 4 and 1 as Indian fans at the ground and millions on television as well as on streaming devices looked in utter disbelief. Even at one point it seemed there was no need for a new batsman to take guard as he was only there to nick next the ball to the keeper or slip cordon.
Details of a disaster! #AUSvsIND #TeamIndia #cricketnews pic.twitter.com/9HaOf6FACc
— Cricket News (@cricketnews_com) December 19, 2020
The architects of this carnage were of course Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, who bowled one of best spells of all time in the history of Test cricket. It was their consistency and disciplined effort which resulted in a shambolic surrender on part of the Indians. However, interestingly barring being a touch fuller and a touch straighter, they didn’t change their bowling plans drastically compared to the first innings. It was their same trademark fourth-stump line which generally keeps the batsmen guessing – whether to play or leave. But this time the ball swung the right amount to produce an edge, not a play a miss (there hardly any in the innings); the length is just full enough for the ball to move without letting the batsmen drive. Furthermore, the pitch quickened up a little bit, hence the batters were reluctant to bat outside the crease to counter the moving pink ball.
Nevertheless, we should not deny that there were technical flaws on part of the Indian batsmen. In fact, on multiple occasions in the recent past we had seen these players caught napping against the swinging ball – be it Cape Town, Birmingham or Christchurch. Getting stuck at the crease, not using the feet enough to counter the movement of the ball, not trusting their defense enough – time and again we saw these issues haunting the Indian Test batters. But on Saturday, they collectively took their struggle to a different level altogether.
Skipper Kohli felt the mindset of his colleagues led to their downfall in this innings.
It is 😶#AUSvsIND #TeamIndia #Kohli #cricketnews pic.twitter.com/EQyj3TK9S7
— Cricket News (@cricketnews_com) December 19, 2020
“The bowlers bowled similar kind of areas in the first innings as well, but then our mindset was to get runs,” he pointed out. “There were some good balls but I don’t think it did anything drastic. Just the atmosphere was created where runs were difficult to come by. I think it was a combination of both – lack of intent, and bowlers bowling in good areas.”
“I think the way we batted allowed them to look more potent than they probably were in the morning, to be honest,” Kohli added, in the post-match press conference. “Because they bowled similar lengths in the first innings as well and we batted way, way better in the first innings than in the second innings obviously.”
The Indian captain also believed the tricky first-innings lead created a bit of indecisiveness amongst the batsmen.
“A bit of a lead can always be tricky, because as a batting unit you can go into a headspace where you feel like we’re just 50-60 ahead so you don’t want to lose early wickets so the opposition comes into the game. You’ve always got to be positive, you can’t think like that. Hence I said that we lacked intent.”
Perhaps Kohli was expecting his batsmen to do what Tim Paine was doing towards the end of Australia’s first innings. Under the circumstances, it would have been much ideal for some of these players to get out in the quest for runs rather than collectively producing such an effort which will now be placed in Indian cricket’s hall of shame.