So, finally we are back to the test cricket, those five-day long games. We are witnessing The Border- Gavaskar Trophy here between two of the best test teams playing right now.
So let’s talk about the first day of the Day-Night Test that is being played in Adelaide. So first day, there was no Shubman Gill in the playing 11. We had Prithvi Shaw opening with Mayank Agrawal. So the first highlight of the day comes with the exceptional ball bowled by Starc which made Shaw go back to the pavilion. Well interestingly Ricky Ponting just predicted that Starc should bowl him a bit outside the off stump with the perfect seam and that’s what happened the very next ball ( Ricky Ponting was DC’s coach).
But after that we see ‘The Wall’ coming in. And Pujara starts batting the way he always bats. Agrawal and Pujara actually started the innings for India but that Pat Cummins’s perfect ball with perfect line and length bowled Mayank.
Kohli is in the Town
And then ‘the man who loves Adelaide’ comes in. It’s Virat Kohli on the crease now. So Pujara is batting in his usual way but here today we saw Kohli playing really really slow right from start of his innings. Pujara and Kohli were creating a good partnership there after the return of both the openers. Though they were batting very slow but yes they were bringing India back from the early lost wickets.
Now some will say that it doesn’t matter even if they play slow in test matches. But actually it matters. Now what if Pujara and Kohli bat slowly and then you have a fall of wickets. The team will neither have runs nor the wickets, so sometimes you need runs in test matches with But the team was doing well here.
But Nathan Lyon was a bit troubling to Cheteshwar Pujara. He was batting in an old school manner by using his pads to make the ball dead. But Lyon was bowling perfect lengths. And at last Pujara got out. Still Rahane and Kohli took the responsibility and played nicely.
The Kohli-Rahane Story
And then after a break Rahane and especially Kohli started hitting the ball hard. Both of them increased the run rate. They played really good cover drives to Lyon. Kohli was then attacking to Bouncers after the break. Pulling them hard while he was leaving them before the break. Because he knew that the new ball was going to get available after some overs and that was the right time to attack.
But then came a nightmare for India when Kohli departed because of a run out. Well many people will talk that it was Rahane’s call and that made Kohli get run out. But mistakes happen. Even Kohli didn’t say anything to Rahane because regret of getting the skipper out was easily visible on his face.
The Fall
Well I know many of us had huge expectations from Hanuma Vihari as he performed very well in the practice matches. But here is the main part; The Aussies are now having the new ball and this made the pacers trouble the batsmen. Then Rahane who just lost his concentration a bit as he was himself regretful in his mind of Kohli’s run out, lost his wicket.
Vihari lost his wicket too and now Saha is having the responsibility to take team forward. In last six to seven overs of the day even Ashwin batted well but if Vihari might have survived till the end of the day, they might have had time for planning of next day. And especially we might have had two batsman playing the game tomorrow.
But now the responsibility is on Saha to take team beyond 280 atleast, I think it’s difficult to take team at 300 according to the current situation but let’s see what will happen tomorrow.
So that’s all for today, we will meet tomorrow with another Cricket Chat only Cricket Tales.
CRICKET TALES 