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Follow UsIn a world filled with cherry-picked statistics, here’s one that, funnily enough, sums up the happenings on the second day of the Adelaide Test.
Indian batters under the age of 30: 95 runs, 2 dismissals, average 47.5
Indian batters over the age of 30: 24 runs, 3 dismissals, average 8.0
Of course it’s a pretty absurd ‘stat’ that does not mean much, but it does have one truth concealed in it, which is that, under lights on day two in Adelaide, India’s seniors did not show up when the side desperately needed them to.
That has put the side on the brink of defeat, with the visitors trailing by 29 runs with just five wickets remaining.
The slide began with KL Rahul, who had a torrid time on day one and was nearly dismissed thrice in his 64-ball stay. He once again began less than convincingly, in contrast to Perth, and gloved a short one to the wicketkeeper on his 10th ball.
Virat Kohli, the next ‘senior’ in the list, began his innings restlessly, not for the first time. He lived dangerously for the first few deliveries but then tightened it up a bit, employing a handful of leaves to balls on the fifth-sixth stump channel which have proved to be his Achilles Heel. But old habits die hard, and yet again, he perished trying to defend off the front foot.
Credit for Kohli’s dismissal, however, has to be given to the bowler Scott Boland, who kept hitting that dangerous channel outside off over and over again.
Was the second innings century in Perth a false dawn? Well, based on whatever we saw of Kohli in this Adelaide Test, you probably have to say so. While it’s commendable that he made best use of conditions that day and pummelled Australia to submission, the weakness outside off-stump seems to be an issue that’s unsolvable.
Rohit Sharma, who moved down to No.6, nearly got trapped LBW on his very second ball. Initially it looked like he’d been saved by Starc overstepping. But replays showed that he’d gotten a thick inside edge. But in his 15-ball stay, Rohit never looked settled and got cleaned up by Pat Cummins via a pearler that hit top of off.
It was one of the deliveries of the match, indeed, but what can’t be ignored is Rohit’s recent tendency to get out in the same fashion he did today repeatedly. We saw it in the England series against Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes. We saw it in the New Zealand series against Tim Southee. And now we’re seeing it against Cummins.
Rohit is now averaging 11.83 across his last TWELVE Test innings, and has faced over 25 balls JUST ONCE.
Yashasvi Jaiswal got in and got out, Shubman Gill was undone by a Starc special while both Rishabh Pant and Nitish Kumar Reddy dazzled and are still out at the middle.
India can take encouragement from the way the younger players have gone about things, even though Gill and Jaiswal could - and should - have done much better. However, the no-show from the seniors under pressure will concern them. It’s now turning out to be a pattern.
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