India bowl out Australia in just 32.3 overs to win first Test by an innings & 132 runs’

On a sporting field, one of the most dangerous things to do is to underestimate the strength of your opponents. As fans or journalists or pundits, overestimating the opposition can be equally troublesome because you can easily be left with egg on your face at the end of a game.

That certainly seemed to be the case for many at the end of the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in which India crushed Australia by an innings and 132 runs inside three days.

In the lead-up to the series and the match, it was widely believed that this was a balanced and strong Australian team, one that was high on confidence and had the mental strength and adaptability to succeed in Indian conditions.


What happened was far from that. For starters the team balance was rocked by two missing personnel, Cameron Green, the allrounder, a forced omission through injury and Travis Head, by choice. But, missing these two players was not why Australia lost.

Australia lost because their heads were just not in the right space. Spooked by the designer pitch, Australia saw conspiracies and traps where none existed, although to the credit of Pat Cummins and his teammates, they never once publicly complained about the pitch. And, this is a good thing, given just how well India batted on it.

That Rohit Sharma scored a sparkling century is no surprise given his unquestionable class and cricketing acumen. But, in the first innings, Australia lost their last five wickets for only 15 runs. India’s spinners were just too good for the lower order. Contrast this with India, whose last three added 160, to take the team from a good score to one from which only a miraculous performance could save Australia.

Ravindra Jadeja’s growth as a Test batsman and his consistency has been put down to self-belief. Ravi Shastri, the former coach, explained on air that the coaching staff had always believed in Jadeja, but it was only in the last few years that Jadeja himself began to believe and take responsibility when elevated to No. 5 or No. 6. The manner in which Jadeja allies a compact technique, a clear plan and a genuine desire to take the game forward for his team was evident.

Axar Patel, who is relatively new to Test cricket, also found a way with the bat. This involved getting a good stride in, ensuring his leg did not get in the way of the bat coming down, and not trying anything extravagant.

When the Australian batting unit sits down to take a collective look in the mirror, they must ask themselves how even India’s lower order is finding ways to make runs in these conditions, while their specialist batsmen aren’t. It’s one thing to say that India’s spinners are much better — and this is an undeniable fact, or that their players are more used to the conditions. This is also true.

But, Australia are the No. 1 Test team in the world, although they will be the first to admit they did not play a Test match worthy of the ranking. The manner in which batsmen went right back in the crease to Jadeja, on a second-innings pitch where the ball was bound to keep low every now and again, was hard to believe. With natural variation, some balls are bound to turn sharply and some go on straight. If you play back, it’s only a matter of time before one of those deliveries nails you in front of the stumps.

Against R Ashwin, batsmen either did not have the wherewithal to disturb his rhythm or did not try hard enough to do so. A bowler of his intelligence will not mind conceding the occasional boundary when he is tossing the ball up and enticing the drive, but when you don’t rotate the strike against him, Ashwin is at his most dangerous. This allows him to set up batsmen, using his skill and craft to plan the dismissal, rather than just putting the ball in the right areas and hoping that the pitch will do the rest.

The one thing this Australian team is not short on is fight. So they will put in the hard yards ahead of the second Test, trying to figure out what went wrong and how that can be fixed. Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and to some extent Alex Carey look like they have a plan in place, a method in mind, even if it didn’t come off, and now it’s unto the other batsmen to do the same.

In these conditions, against this Indian bowling attack, simply going with the flow is not good enough. You better have a solid Plan A and stick to it and hope that it works well enough not to have to fall back on Plan B.