it’s so unfair.
how can India Do it for Australia? is bidding for a place in the finals of World Test Championship, India had no right to do this to the visiting team. This made the contest so one-sided that Australia were never in the game. Hell, they were out if it happened before the first ball of the series was bowled. Doctored track, selective watering, use of Gripo – how much can Australia take?
India should not have done this. India shouldn’t have been playing cricket so well that heavyweights Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and David Warner were made to look like your weekend club cricketers, playing a league or two below their level.
So was it the devil in the pitch that saw Australia suffer a humiliating defeat in the first match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Vidarbha. Cricket Association Stadium, Jamtha?
Well, not at all – it was the animals that played on it – Australia were helpless victims crushed under the juggernaut of this Indian team, who are almost invincible at home.
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Since 2018, India have played 16 Test matches at home, including the first Test, and only two of them have played on the fifth day. Forget fighting against India, the opposition is fighting for its existence. Such has been the ruthlessness of India. They have been unbeaten in 15 consecutive series and on evidence of what we saw in season eight in Nagpur – the Aussies are in for a tough, tough stay and a 16th straight series win is loading up by the time the team reaches Ahmedabad.
Ravichandran Ashwin displayed his immense skill to placate Australia in the second innings after Ravindra Jadeja trapped him with his natural variations that sometimes swung the other way. The fact that seven of the ten wickets that fell in their second innings were either thrown out or LBW gave the Australian media talking nonsense about the pitch’s crooked nature. Good bowling gets you wickets; Not pitch.
The pitch at Nagpur was much better than the landmine it had been at Wankhede in 2004 and even there the Australians managed much more than they managed. It all happened because of use or the lack of it; And to some extent a lack of preparation.
Ashwin was quick to exploit the changing bounce and played with the mind of the Australian batsmen. Yet there were balls that spun viciously, and with dust gusts flying through the rough, this was the same pitch on which both Akshar Patel and Jadeja batted with relative ease.
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You need to know how to take advantage of situations. He said, ‘Ash has played a lot of cricket in India, not only in Test matches, but also in first-class matches before making his debut. Lots of overs have gone into his skills. You need this experience to perform well in such conditions. The guy has it all in terms of variety. What makes them (Ashwin, Jadeja, Akshar) special is how they extract the maximum from those situations,” Rohit said about Ashwin during the post-match media presser.
You can simulate all you want on pitches that mimic conditions and get bowlers who can mimic Ashwin, Jadeja or Axar; But what matters is how you turn around when you actually face those conditions and face these bowlers.
In home Tests since June 2018, Ashwin, Jadeja and Akshar have a combined tally of 186 wickets. Ashwin took 100 wickets in 17 matches at an average of 16.12, Jadeja took 47 wickets in 12 matches at an average of 20.31 and Akshar took 39 wickets in seven matches at an average of 13.15. These numbers are nothing but madness and prove the mastery of these three on home soil.
While Ashwin and Jadeja decimated Australia in only one session in the second innings, it was the Jadeja-Axar combo that dealt Australia the knockout blow. Jadeja lifted India from 229/6 to 328 and then Patel took that lead past 200 as India finished on 400.
And that is one luxury India have at their disposal – three proper all-rounders who can come into the team as specialist bowlers, and now it seems – batsmen too. Gone are the days when India’s tail was quickly chopped off. Now – even if you have dealt with Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara; At least two of Jadeja, Ashwin and Akshar will be waiting at the bottom of the order.
The troika have played in three matches together and made an impressive impact with the ball – 42 wickets between them. But while in Nagpur, his performances with the ball surprised the Australian team; It was his batting that tells us the real reason for India’s dominance at home.
The average of all three in the Tests played since June 2018 is such that the batsmen will be embarrassed. Jadeja, for example, averages 65.90 with the bat with two centuries and 5 fifties – the third best for India for players who have played at least five Tests during this time frame. Akshar scored two fifties in 31.22 and Ashwin scored one hundred and one fifties in 25.16.
And this impressive lower-order form for India has in some ways overshadowed Kohli’s barren patches, Pujara’s dip and top-order inconsistency. Even in the Nagpur game, when Todd Murphy and Nathan Lyon, in the midst of their best spells, quickly removed the Indian middle order, there was every chance of India not having much.
But Jadeja and Axar played sensibly, batted through the tough overs and then accelerated as the sweltering Nagpur heat put pressure on Murphy and Lyon, who bowled 49 and 47 overs respectively in five sessions.
Pat Cummins cut a desolate figure after attending the media presser after the match and even as he admitted that they were no match for the Indians here, he still spoke on the pitch saying that Insisted, “The pitch somehow played as expected. There wasn’t a lot of bounce for the fast bowlers and the spinners were looking dangerous for three days, so there were no surprises in what we expected.”
It would be prudent enough for the captain to understand that the pitch was defeated not by the monsters in it, but by the animals playing on it. Well, Cummins and Co have two extra days to think about this before heading to Delhi, traditionally another slow and low track.
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