8 min readAdelaideDec 8, 2024 06:03 AM IST
First published on: Dec 7, 2024 at 07:36 PM IST
At one point, Jasprit Bumrah went down to the ground in pain. He lay on the ground, stretching his leg, and the physio ran out. Six cricketing days into the series, that was the nightmare moment of dread. What if something happens to Bumrah; what would happen to the Indian attack? Luckily, the groin pain faded out with some treatment – “it was just cramps,” the bowling coach Morne Morkel would say later, but on a day Travis Head walloped them, a few concerns have propped up.
As harsh it is to criticise someone as young and inexperienced as Harshit Rana, a couple of things have to be said. His bowling plan and skills involved were one, but while that still can be put down to his inexperience and part of an important learning curve for any youngster, his fitness seems to be a larger concern. Especially as that part should not be raised against a youngster. He does run out of gas in his later spells; it was visible in Perth too; the pace drops, the venom in hitting the deck that he shows in his first spell lessens.
It also makes one wonder whether Akash Deep, the seamer who has the ability to get the ball to skid, would have been a better selection punt for the pink-ball Test. It won’t be a surprise if Rana does get replaced by Deep for the next game. It was never going to be easy to bowl to Head, especially for someone as new as Rana, as Head can make mockery of lengths with his batting approach. What is a good length to others can almost be a touch short for him as he hangs on the back foot to whack them square. And when Rana tried to go fuller, Head would lash on to them as well.
Those errors are understandable, especially when one remembers the brute of a delivery he served to remove the same batsman in the first innings of the Perth Test, but the way his pace and intensity drops in later spells is a cause of concern. Rana, undoubtedly is likely to improve as a bowler, but as things stand, his bowling level would have been understandable had he been an allrounder, not enough for a specialist pacer. Such was the state when he was getting repeatedly crunched by Head, Rohit Sharma couldn’t even take him off the attack as who would he have turned to? With the next Test at Brisbane almost immediately on the heels of this one, Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj have to be saved up. It would definitely be a different attack had Mohammad Shami been fit and playing, but in his absence a few kinks are showing up, as expected.
Not that everything went awry. Siraj produced one of his finest spells of his career in the morning, but would go wicket-less. After a first, slightly wayward over where he was tailing in on to the middle and leg, Rishabh Pant had run across for a lengthy chat. It’s not sure of course whether the subsequent change was a result of that, but things did change rather dramatically. He had the ball fizzing around the off stump, tailing them in and straightening — and almost always making them play. A few balls flew past the edges of Marnus Labuschagne and Nathan McSweeney and he kept attacking. To Head also he had started well. From round the stumps he tried to cut the ball away; the plan was perfect but he hasn’t quite got that ball nailed yet with the extent of the deviation and getting it to do that late in the piece, to lure the batsman to err. But otherwise, he was spot on with his line, length, and aggression. The one moment he boiled over came right after getting Head out, but India should be thrilled with the way he bowled through the day.
Ashwin uses the breeze
Ashwin did what he could on a second day pitch, tried his best to keep things tight and used the breeze to repeatedly skid the ball into the left-handers and away from the right-handers. One such ball took the outside edge of a lunging Mitch Marsh and was snapped up by Pant. The Indians didn’t appeal much but Marsh had walked off by then. “Tu appeal hi nahi kiya?!” Ashwin would protest to a sheepish-looking Pant.
As for India’s batting, the refreshing highlights came right in the end in the way when Pant and later, Nitish Reddy joined him. Pant charged down the pitch to slam Scott Boland, who looked visibly surprised. Pant would specifically target Boland with his adventurism; falling on the off side to lap a short rising ball or going down the track to smear him through the off side. Boland is a bowler who generally hits similar lengths consistently and Pant’s approach was tailored to throw him off his comfort zone. And it worked. Nitish too cottoned on to Pant’s approach, and he even walked down the first ball he faced, and would crunch a couple of aggressive hits before stumps.
India again had a decent phase, albeit short, when Yashasvi Jaiswal was batting, but he perished off Boland’s first delivery, edging an away-angler. KL Rahul had gone for a pull off Pat Cummins even though he was cramped for room by that ball on the leg stump, and gloved it behind to the wicketkeeper Alex Carey. Virat Kohli was steadier than in the first innings, but he too fell, tentatively poking inside the line of a Boland delivery that just about straightened to take the edge. Jaiswal and Kohli’s dismissals had perhaps pushed Pant to do what he did to Boland.
Rohit’s worrying dismissals
Just when it seemed Rohit Sharma might be able to survive the day with Pant, he too was dismissed. It was Cummins’s best delivery of the Test. It landed on a length around off stump and straightened to hit the off peg. Pretty similar to New Zealand’s Tim Southee’s dismissals of Rohit Sharma in the recent home series. This happens to Rohit due to the way he bats at times: he isn’t quite forward and more importantly plays the line of the ball. And even slight deviation from what he expects can be enough to rush past the edge and hit the off stump. Or move in to trap him lbw. That playing the line was one of the reasons for his success as Test opener in England in 2018, but his feet movement was crisper, quicker, and more purposeful then. Australians are going to repeatedly target him with such deliveries as seen in this Test: the one that shades away just a touch to threaten his off stump or the one that moves back in more to threaten his pad. He will have to find a way out. But then, so does the Indian batting unit as a whole. It now rests on the adventurous Pant taking clever and calculated risks and the impressively plucky and skilful Reddy.
Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj react during Day 2 of the India vs australia Test. (AP) 
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