Adelaide Oval Day 3 beautiful weather is traditionally a batting average boosting run fest. It wasn’t the night session which makes the 36 more amazing.
The pink ball night test is the best cricket initiative.
Shame we have just had COVID reappear in Sydney and my 5 day booze binge at the Sydney test in January is under pressure as the test could be moved. First world problem.
Ajinkya Rahane standing in for Kohli in the second test as captain, does a really good job in selecting Jadeja as a fifth bowler, loses a toss that was a good one to lose, good field placements and bowling changes in Aussie’s first innings, and scores a ton overnight. Virat will be watching with interest…
I have really drifted away from Cricket. I just didn’t know there’s THREE tests going on. The saddest part is I know barely 8-10 of the 66 players involved.
What difference that Rahane’s captaincy brings to the table in long term. He is 32 years old. At max, will have 2-3 years at top level.
Rohit Sharma is old too. After Kohli they don’t have a captain. After Rohit/Dawan, they don’t have openers. After Dhoni, they don’t have a decent wicket keeper. Imho, India is on downward slope. Watch them crash and burn in next 3 years.
They said the same when the previous generation retired , They’ll say the same now. Any team will suffer slightly with transitions. Even Australia for that matter, take away Smith and Warner, What’s the batting order looking like ? Look at how bad Srilanka, Pakistan & SA have handled their transitions.
India’s gonna struggle for a bit , but then they still have a viable first class cricket structure ( not on the par of Australia and England perhaps) enough to get good level cricketers through. Look at the quickies who’ve come on iin recent times , The likes of Bumrah and Shami etc. There’s been a steady line of quicks coming on now.
Tim Paine got handed the captaincy to Australia when he was on the verge of retiring. He hasn’t done a bad job. Age is just that, especially for batsmen. With increasing fitness regimes etc, There’s every chance of someone staying in a side on merit till he’s 36.
Pretty scarring yeah, but let’s hope it remains only for the stats book. I was hoping our boys would recover some pride, but they played beyond expectations.
Play well in the next 2 to grab the series then that 36 will only remain an aberration in a exceptionally performance throughout the series.
It will be very tough against the Aussies but not impossible.
India have made up for that awful performance in the first test. Given how many key players they are missing, it was a decent performance to turn it around. Sounds like Kohli is missing more games, which I’m not a fan of, but it is what it is. Steve Smith likely back next week, which is a big boost for Australia.
One of the more entertaining test series in a while. Main challenge for me is being able to watch the damn thing live and function the next day at work. Gave up at 2.30am, when India bowled out the Aussies at lunch, assuming that India would have it sewn up pretty quick. which they did do…eventually!
The worst part of the 36 all out was that played out in one session. India , despite fielding poorly and catching allowing the australians to get closer to their score were actually looking to have the slight advantage.
I’d be fucking pissed if the 36 all out madness over one session costs us a chance to win a overseas series.
Agree, there is still a very good chance that we will lose but the team did well to bring the match to the stage it is in. Unable to watch it live but the contrast in some batting performance is startling. Pant scored 97 at a strike rate of 82, while Vihari who is still batting at 15 took 129 balls to do so.
Wonderful test match which neither side really deserved to lose. Very happy for India, especially after the racism in the crowd. I hope CA take a strong stand on that.
Only ~70 runs short in the end - makes you wonder. In a game I played against the MCC I came in at 5 with Ian Salisbury having ripped out our top three for less than 40. Had to steadily rebuild, although I did hit him over the pavilion in a rare shot of aggression.
After protecting my wicket for so long I was run out by my partner in the penultimate over. Still haven’t forgiven him! We drew the game but were 30 runs short of winning.
So tantalising. Play expansive and you could easily get bowled out, but then we could also have won the game had we done so.
70 runs is probably a bit too much of a shortfall to feel doubts about but still…one of the great things about the longer form are these ebbs and flows. Test matches are the great literary classics of sport, T20s are the limericks.
Saw that New Zealand are now top of the test rankings. That’s a brilliant achievement for them. Weirdly I can’t remember them having particularly brilliant results but they must have done. All built on their form at home over short series, it seems.
Since beating a poor West Indies away from home in 2014, the only away test series they’ve won was 4 years ago against Zimbabwe(!). Since then they’ve only played four test series away from home, losing three and drawing against Sri Lanka 1-1 in a two-test series.
In contrast they’ve played 12 home series in that same period, winning 11, losing only against South Africa in the only three test series played in New Zealand (the others all two test series apart from one other three test series played in the UAE against Pakistan).
Seems a bit absurd to me. Normally a team would need to be winning home and away constantly for about three years to get to the top of the rankings.