Mitchell Starc‘s sizzling spell with the pink ball headlined the opening day of the day-night Test in Adelaide as Australia responded to their 295-run drubbing in Perth by dismissing India for 180. Mitchell Starc got his fourth five-wicket haul in D/N Tests and his 15th overall in Test cricket as Australia bowled India out for 180 on the first day in Adelaide. Australia continued to boss proceedings with the bat, albeit defensively as they erased 85 from the deficit.
Mitchell Starc became the fourth Australian bowler to take 350 wickets across formats at home. He enjoyed bowling with the pink ball, picking up a six-wicket haul on Friday. Mitchell Starc continued his love affair with the pink ball, rattling India in the second Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Adelaide. Mitchell Starc ran through India’s batting order, picking up his 15th five-wicket haul in Test cricket. The left-arm fast bowler got the big wickets of Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, and Yashasvi Jaiswal on an event-filled opening day.
Mitchell Starc extended his lead at the top of an elite list, picking up his fourth five-wicket haul in day-night Tests — the most by a pacer. He has two more than Trent Boult of New Zealand and his compatriot Josh Hazlewood, who missed the Adelaide Test against India due to a side strain. Meanwhile, Mitchell Starc also achieved a major milestone, becoming only the fourth Australian bowler to take more than 350 wickets across all formats of the game in home conditions. He joined an elite list that includes the legendary Shane Warne and Brett Lee.
Pitch Report and Toss
Pitch Report : Over the last few days, a lot of grass has been taken off. There’s still a fair amount of grass there – 6mm of grass – which will mean the new ball bowlers will have plenty of help at the start while the ball is hard and new. Adelaide pitches have been known to be very good for batting. It could actually seam around quite a lot. Pretty good batting conditions for day one and two. Bowlers then start to own in the back end of the sessions on day two and then averages go down reckons Sunil Gavaskar and Matthew Hayden.
Toss : Indian skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bat with three changes in the playing XI replacing Washington Sundar with Ravichandran Ashwin , the skipper himself in place of Dhruv Jurel and Shubman Gill in place of Devdutt Padikkal. Australian skipper Pat Cummins who already has announced his playing XI a day earlier made one change bringing in Scott Boland for Josh Hazlewood.
Day 1 : Session 1 : Australia quicks rip through India’s top-order
Mitchell Starc was on the money from the word go after India won the toss and opted to bat on an overcast afternoon. He gave it back to Yashasvi Jaiswal, who had sledged the Australian fast bowler in Perth, with a wicket in the first delivery of the match. Starc swung the ball from the leg-stump and straightened it to hit Yashasvi’s pads. The young Indian opener was dismissed for a golden duck, 10 days after the daddy hundred in the second innings of the Perth Test.
An action-packed first session saw Australia’s pacers ripping through India’s top order after Mitchell Starc set the tone upfront. With the first ball of the match, Starc had Yashasvi Jaiswal, the centurion from the first Test, playing around a full ball and being trapped LBW. It gave an underfire Australia the perfect start on their comeback trail.
It all started with that first ball to Yashasvi Jaiswal, who had told Starc that he was “coming on too slow” in Perth. On Friday in Adelaide, Mitchell Starc let rip a full, fast one that threatened to angle down leg before swerving back into the line of the stumps and seaming in the other direction off the pitch to beat the attempted flick and thud into front pad. It was so plumb that Jaiswal didn’t even bother to review.
Mitchell Starc roared at the departing Jaiswal and had over 36,000 spectators – the biggest crowd for an India-Australia Test in Adelaide – roaring with him.
KL Rahul, got a reprieve, when he was adjudged caught behind off Scott Boland’s first ball but was asked to come back because the pacer had overstepped. Usman Khawaja also put him down in the same over at first slip. With those reprieves, and a fluent Shubman Gill at the other end, India managed to pull their way back into the game.
Gill, playing his first Test of the series, showed little signs of any rustiness as he cashed in on Starc’s attacking lengths to pick up some eye-catching boundaries. After getting off the mark only off he 24th ball he faced, Rahul too began to get his eye in.
The duo put India in a position of relative comfort with a 69-run stand. But against the run of play, Australia regained control in the last half hour. All of Australia’s pacers had stamped their presence with Cummins being the most miserly. But it was Starc, coming back for his second spell, that did the damage again. He had Rahul caught low at gully by Nathan McSweeney and a tentative Virat Kohli poking out and edging to second slip.
Shubman Gill, who returned to India’s Test XI after missing the Perth Test with a hand injury, and KL Rahul then briefly settled India’s innings with a 69-run stand for the second wicket. Gill showed little signs of rust and laid into drives whenever Australia’s quicks veered away from their lengths and the stumps.
At the other end, Rahul was more circumspect, playing out Cummins for three maidens, before fending at Scott Boland’s first ball, which reared up to threaten the shoulder of his bat. Rahul walked off, thinking he had nicked it behind but a front-foot no-ball from Boland earned him a reprieve. There was nothing on the Snicko either. Five balls later, Boland hit Rahul’s outside edge but Khawaja grassed the chance at first slip.
But the cherry on top was Boland, who got the better of Gill. The batter had countered Boland’s off-stump channel probes with a different trigger movement that allowed him to cover his offstump more and leave well. But it also exposed him to the full ball, which Boland finally deployed toward the end of the session and trapped him leg before. Losing three wickets in the space of fifteen balls left India down in the doldrums at the interval.
Rahul’s luck, however, ran out when Mitchell Starc returned for his second spell and struck with his fourth ball. He extracted extra bounce and had Rahul edging to gully for 37 off 64 balls. In his next over, Mitchell Starc took out Virat Kohli for seven off eight balls with a similar prancing delivery. Soon after, Boland nipped one into Gill’s pads as India lost 3 for 12 in a chaotic 15-minute period before the dinner break.
Day 1 : Session 2 : Mitchell Starc’s career-best bowls India out for 180
India’s slump continued after resumption, with Boland pinning Rohit Sharma’s pads this time. Playing in his first Test match in over a year, in place of the injured Josh Hazlewood, Boland kept it on a good length, or just back of it, and kept gleaning seam movement. Rohit, who had slid down the order to No. 6 to accommodate Rahul at the top alongside Jaiswal, fell for 3 off 23 balls.
Skipper Rohit Sharma, now coming in at No. 6, was done in by a sharp incoming delivery from Boland while Cummins got a solid-looking Rishabh Pant with a snorter of a short ball. Starc came back to claim his five-fer yorking both R Ashwin and Harshit Rana in the same over.
Cummins then joined the fun when he bounced Rishabh Pant out, with a back-of-a-length delivery that kicked up at his ribs, for 21 off 35 balls. It meant so much to Cummins that he celebrated it with a big roar. The Australia captain had looked underdone in Perth and wasn’t at his sharpest with the new ball on Friday, but redeemed himself with the big scalp of Pant.
Despite wickets falling at the other end, Nitish Kumar Reddy remained unfazed and rolled out the big hits. When Mitchell Starc pitched one too full, Reddy audaciously drilled him over extra-cover for six and in the next over he lined up Boland for a sequence of 6,4,6. The first six was jaw-dropping reverse-swat over the slip cordon, which cleared one of the biggest boundaries at the ground at deep third. It even put a smile on Bumrah’s face, but the joy was short-lived as Mitchell Starc combined with Cummins to wrap up India’s innings.
After having top-scored for India in his debut innings in Perth, Reddy did the same in the first innings in Adelaide, finishing with 42 off 54 balls, including three fours and a six. Reddy was the last Indian batter to be dismissed, with Mitchell Starc having him hole out to mid-off.
R Ashwin, who was picked ahead of Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, looked good during his run-a-ball 22 before Starc made him look silly with an inch-perfect inswinging yorker with a 39-over-old ball. The blow to his foot kept him off the field for the start of Australia’s innings, but India’s team management must have been relieved when he bowled the penultimate over of the day without any apparent discomfort.
With the tail for company, Nitish Reddy picked out a few shots from the T20 playbook including an audacious reverse-scooped six off Boland. He was the last man dismissed for an innings-topping 42, trying to hit out against Mitchell Starc, who finished with career-best figures of 6/48.
Day 1 : Session 3 : Mitchell Starc’s 6-fer headlines Australia’s dominant start in Adelaide
Mitchell Starc got his fourth five-wicket haul in D/N Tests and his 15th overall in Test cricket as Australia bowled India out for 180 on the first day in Adelaide. Australia continued to boss proceedings with the bat, albeit defensively as they erased 85 from the deficit.
Australia came out to bat under tricky conditions with the light just taking effect, and typically a good time for seamers. Although India managed appreciably more movement in the first ten overs as compared to Australia, it however did not result in wickets.
Usman Khawaja and Nathan McSweeney, who was more watchful, ground the opening spell out particularly against the Jasprit Bumrah threat largely. However, a change in angle to round the wicket finally got the better of Khawaja who ended up nicking to first slip. Bumrah could have had McSweeney too in similar fashion earlier, if not for Pant diving and dropping a catch that appeared to be heading to first slip.
Bumrah was potent with the new ball and produced India’s only breakthrough on the day when he went around the wicket and had Khawaja jabbing behind with a beauty for 13 off 35 balls. India also had a chance to dislodge McSweeney cheaply when Bumrah found his outside edge, but a diving Pant shelled it. Rohit, at first slip, couldn’t grab it on the rebound either, with the ball hitting his wrist and going down.
McSweeney was on 3 at that point, having got off the mark after 17 balls. At the other end, Labuschagne, who is facing considerable heat for his recent lean run, needed 19 balls to get off the mark. A freebie on his pads from Mohammed Siraj then got him going.
Harshit Rana lobbed some verbal volleys at the Australia batters and banged the pink ball into the pitch. But McSweeney was ready to fight fire with fire and firmly pulled him over midwicket for four. After having seen off the new-ball spells of Bumrah and Siraj under twilight, McSweeney picked away five fours off Rana and Reddy and set Australia up for a batting day against the older ball under natural light on Saturday .
Nevertheless, the opener was joined by a dogged Marnus Labuschagne, who took 18 balls to get off the mark. The duo stuck to their guns to see the day through, earning Australia the first day’s honours.
Road Ahead on Day 2 for India and Australia
Mitchell Starc’s sizzling spell with the pink ball headlined the opening day of the day-night Test in Adelaide as Australia responded to their 295-run drubbing in Perth by dismissing India for 180.
Jasprit Bumrah then got rid of Usman Khawaja in the twilight but the under-pressure Marnus Labuschagne and rookie opener Nathan McSweeney navigated a tricky passage of play to guide Australia to stumps without any further damage. Their unbroken 62-run partnership helped Australia cut their deficit to under 100 and ensured that the first day belonged to them.
The first ball from Mitchell Starc was a portent for what was to follow. He struck in the first over of each of his three spells, asserting his supremacy in pink-ball Tests. He came away with career-best Test figures of 6 for 48, which extended his pink-ball tally in Australia to 72. It is twice as many as Pat Cummins (36) has taken and 29 more than what Nathan Lyon, Starc’s closest contender in pink-ball Test cricket in the country, has managed.
Riveting day of Test cricket. Wicket first ball from Starc, fifty partnership between Rahul and Gill, Starc coming back to remove Rahul and Kohli in quick succession, Boland accounting for Gill and Rohit either side of the tea break. India slipped from 69/1 to 87/5. Nitish Reddy, just like the first innings of the Perth Test, top-scored with an impressive 42 but it was Mitchell Starc who was once again superb with the pink ball.
Got the ball to swing consistently, troubled the top order batters with bounce and cleaned up a couple of lower order batters with his yorkers to finish with his career-best figures of 6/48. Even after skittling out India for 180, Australia would have been under some sort of pressure as they had to bat under lights in the final session.
While the Indian bowlers got more seam and swing movement than their counterparts in the first 10 overs, they weren’t attacking the stumps enough to trouble the batters. The bowling was disciplined but the Aussies were happy to leave most deliveries outside off. McSweeney got a reprieve on 1 and Bumrah provided the breakthrough when he had Khawaja caught at 1st slip.
That turned out to be the only wicket of the session as Labuschagne and McSweeney batted patiently. The deficit is under 100, nine wickets still in hand and day two is generally the best day to bat at the Adelaide Oval. Australia on top at the moment. Can they cash in or will India make a comeback on Day 2 would be an interesting watch.