It is often said that test cricket finds strange ways to balance the ups and downs during a long enough race. On a later day, when this series is nothing more than a distant memory and India’s tour of Australia in 2020-21 is remembered in records and numbers, Virat Kohli might grudgingly admit that his career has seen those scales at work in the Adelaide Oval. .
In the space of seconds on Thursday, the first day of the opening test in Adelaide, Kohli went from calmly confident of reaching his fourth test hundred in the city to having it all snatched from him in a weird and bitter way, down to just the second run-out of his Test career spanning 146 innings and nine and a half years. Where did the first burnout occur? In Adelaide, of course, in the subsequent entries to record his maiden Test hundred on the same ground.
Run that never was
The bases had been laid and the hard yards had been started for the 77th final, the end of Kohli’s firing that eventually, as is often the case, gave Australia a boost. Batting at 74, Kohli, first with Cheteshwar Pujara and then Ajinkya Rahane, survived the first pink ball scares in Thursday’s first session, rebuilt India’s innings in the second, and was looking forward to the final challenge of the day of the second new ball in the third when he was called up for a run that never went.
Following the last ball from a Nathan Lyon, Rahane, hitting with remarkable aggression at 41, drove the ball straight into midfield and took off to steal a 42 run. Kohli committed to the single, only to be returned by his teammate. The captain was quite short, the vice-captain raised a palm in sincere apology and he was never the same batter again. Rahane added just one more run in the next three overs and was fired in the first over of the second new ball, caught leg earlier by Mitchell Starc.
And so India had lost Kohli, Rahane and Hanuma Vihari in the space of 18 races, looking poised for better things just moments ago at 188/3. “We were in a good position, but after losing Kohli and Rahane, they have a bit of an advantage,” Pujara admitted at the press conference.
When the stumps were removed at 233/6, India’s hitters for the night were Wriddhiman Saha and R Ashwin. Both face the unenviable task of finding runs against a ball that still has a lot of varnish on the second day, something that even the new ball specialists in India’s opening games could not do on the difficult opening day of the Serie.
Rahane’s season with the second new ball lasted four balls, two longer than Shaw’s season with the first, thrown by Starc in the second ball of the day. Pujara, the hero of the 2018-19 India Down Under tour, came in and seemed just as determined to spend time on the fold as he was two years ago. It wasn’t easy: Pujara’s bat sprayed edges against fast pitchers initially and then kept nearby fielders busy as he tackled Lyon. But in between, especially during his time on the fold with Kohli as a partner, it was Test Match hitting at its finest.
True value
Action picked up in the second session, long after Pujara and Kohli broke through in the first, watching India go into the dinner break at 41/2 after 25 overs. It was final 32, Lyon’s first, when Pujara even started thinking about racing. He used his feet and cut it down two last ravines and then danced down the gate again and drove it for three runs, which stopped at the coverage limit, the closest he came to the ropes in an inning that had already spanned 109 balls. .
Kohli found things easier. After Lyon’s first follow-up ball, Kohli hit him over his head to mark a limit, taking the burden off the man who has fired him most often in test cricket (7). Lyon would have had Kohli’s number for the eighth time if captain and goalkeeper Tim Paine had referred a caught appeal. Paine did not, and Kohli, then the 16, escaped.
Almost in celebration in the next over, Kohli hit a full-length ball from Starc to the edge of the midwicket. And so began a game of cat and mouse between them: Starc probed a line off the line that Kohli did not fall in love with, but he hit the India captain on the finger in the 43rd. When the next ball also fell short, Kohli stepped inside the line and threw it authoritatively for another limit.
By the time over 48 came, Pujara had not set a limit at 147 balls. But in the space of the next two, thrown by Lyon, he would hit Adelaide’s fences twice, hitting Kohli in the 40’s. But shortly before tea, Lyon tricked Pujara into throwing one more edge-to-leg slip, this opportunity seized by a tailing Marnus Labuschagne. He had scored an invaluable 43, eating 160 balls, and India had tea with 107/3.
The last session is the most dangerous in day-night cricket. This is when day really turns into night and the spotlights help the ball buzz in one way or another. Kohli and rookie Rahane were unafraid throughout the session, first knocking Lyon out of the attack for the 62nd with a burst of four and then dealing with the wrath of the pacemakers. Josh Hazlewood beat Kohli and finished in the 68th with a ball that was quickly reversing, but Kohli was quick to realign and serve the next ball for four.
Similarly, Pat Cummins twice induced a Rahane sword edge in ’74, before Rahane got behind the line of a Cummins gorilla and struck him six over the deep square leg. Rahane and Kohli’s confidence was on the rise, as was India’s score, which skyrocketed quickly. Until a moment of misunderstanding brought everything to a sudden stop.
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