Australia Square The Series

Essentially, the Adelaide Test was the Perth Test in reverse. In Perth, it was the Indian quicks who found the perfect length for the conditions, and had the better bowling conditions. In Adelaide, it was the Australians. Their mastery of the pink ball, and especially Mitchell Starc’s mastery of it (he now has 74 wickets at 18 in thirteen D/N Tests) told. The bounce stayed true throughout the match in Adelaide. The Australians challenged both edges of the bat and the top of off stump more effectively than the Indians.

The difference between Scott Boland and Harshit Rana was perhaps the difference in the match. The Indians sought to attack Boland, just as the Australians sought to attack Rana. The difference was that Boland’s greater first class experience told, and he persisted with his usual nagging attacking length. Rana’s control is not as good as Boland’s. Adelaide was Rana’s 12th first class match. Rana is about to turn 23. Boland is about turn 36 and Adelaide was his 108th first class match. Boland went for runs, but he also got wickets. Rana conceded 86 in his 16 overs, and didn’t.

In Perth, India led by 367 before they had their first batter dismissed in a manner other than caught. In Adelaide, Australia led by 130 before Travis Head was the first Australian batter to be out in a manner other than caught.

Basically, it was a case of Australia having more high quality bowlers, bowling in better bowling conditions. Nathan McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne saw off the first new ball, aided by the Indians not being able to attack the stumps as well as they had in Perth.

There’s little to be said about the batting. Rohit Sharma’s return ended with two failures thanks to two deliveries which would have dismissed pretty much every batter in the history of the game. The first was an off-break from a fast bowler which beat his inside edge in front of the stumps. The second shaped in marginally before leaving him off the pitch. There is a hint in Rohit Sharma’s game of an extra eagerness to play with the bat which is perhaps causing him to lose his shape marginally more easily than was the case three or fours years ago.

Nitish Reddy has been an interesting experiment. He has done what was expected of him with the bat - use the long handle to good effect against the older ball when batting with the tail. But its not clear what the point of these runs is. He effectively reduces India to a four bowler attack. His bowling does not seem to offer much more than, say, Sanjay Bangar or Sourav Ganguly. Its likely that India will go back to picking Akash Deep and Ravindra Jadeja in place of Reddy and Ashwin. At least, they should.

Ravichandran Ashwin bowled a brilliant 17 over spell in conditions which offered him nothing. He bowled into a marauding Travis Head and troubled him. But, this is a lopsided contest for Ashwin. Nathan Lyon has had basically no role to play in the first two Test matches. He bowled one over in the Adelaide Test. This is why India have tried so hard to play four fast bowlers.

India should not be tempted into shoring up the batting at the cost of bowling. Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj need support, especially given the depth and quality of the Australian pace attack. It’s not clear that they will avoid this temptation.