India have been bested at their game by Australia who roared back in the Border Gavaskar Trophy courtesy an impressive nine-wicket win in a Test that lasted just over two days in Indore. The hopes of a clean sweep thus have gone up in smoke with failure of batters on a difficult pitch being cited as the main reason by India captain Rohit Sharma for the defeat.
India won a good toss but failed to capitalise with their team being bowled out for just 109 inside 34 overs in the first innings. Had it not been for an Australian collapse, they would have been staring at a big deficit to to bridge but a lead of 88 runs still was substantial by the tourists who made 197-all out in response.
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A much improved show was expected from India with the bat but this time as well, they managed just 167 and that was largely due to a fighting half-century from Cheteshwar Pujara. Others, simply crumbled to the spinners.
“There are a lot of things which didn’t go our way,” Rohit said during post-match presentation. “To start with we didn’t bat well in the first innings. We understand how important it is to put runs on the board in the first innings and when they got 80-90 runs lead, we had to produce another innings with the bat but we were not able to do that again. We got just 75 on the board. Had we batted well in the first innings, things would have been slightly different.”
Nathan Lyon took eight wickets in the second innings to limit India’s lead and Rohit acknowledged the offspinner for the brilliant show.
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“Not taking any credit away from their bowlers. especially Nathan Lyon, he kept challenging us hitting the right lengths. When the bowler is trying to do that, got to be a little brave which I thought we were not,” Rohit said.
However, the 35-year-old was quick to point out the performance of his batters in the first two Tests.
Things happen like that, but we can take a lot of credit about how we batted in the first two games. Its all about everyone coming together and chipping in. We want few guys stand up and put their hand up to take the team through. You will falter in your plans and that’s what happened in this game, we didn’t adapt as well as we would have liked to,” Rohit said.
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