India threw very straight lines, eliminated offside goal options – Labuschagne

Despite India 36/9’s head turn in Adelaide, the big narrative heading into the Boxing Day Test at MCG was how the visitors were going to negotiate the gigantic threat posed by Steve Smith. After all, Smith came armed with staggering numbers in this encounter throughout the years: 908 runs in seven MCG Boxing Day Trials averaging 113.50.

Ravichandran Ashwin, however, stopped Smith’s dream career on the spot, as the Australian hitter fell in love with a duck in a test match for the first time since 2016. That anomaly came through clever bowling from the Indian Scion. , which placed a leg slide and lured the former Australian captain into a direct hit at the fielder.

Following a rather ordinary hitting performance in which Australia retired in 195, Marnus Labuschagne reckoned that India bowled straight all day and eliminated any easy scoring path on offside.

“Something that we’re launching very quickly is that people are coming up with new ways, thinking of the game slightly differently,” Labuschagne said of Smith’s sliding leg tactic. “Obviously today, they came out with a heavy field on the sides of their legs and they threw very straight and they didn’t give us any option to score on the opposite side.”

While Ashwin got off to a good start and continued to make life difficult for Australian hitters, the Indian pacemakers didn’t deviate from a very solid plan of ringing the hosts early on either. Rookie Mohammed Siraj also gave a good account of himself, getting the ball rocking and constantly attacking the pads to hinder the run.

Labuschagne, who would become Siraj’s first test lady, felt it was the kind of day where batters had to dig for long hours to overcome the immaculate plans of the opposition.

“You just know that you’re going to have to brace yourself and hit for long periods of time. They’re bowling in straight lines, you don’t get a lot of runs on the other side so this is the art of test cricket, that’s why everyone we love it. Because it’s an ongoing challenge for bowlers to come up with new ideas to prevent hitters from scoring and creating pressure, and that’s what they did today. ”

Interestingly, and much to the delight of India after Ajinkya Rahane lost the draw, MCG’s release behaved very differently than usual. The last five scores from the first innings before today’s game were 551/3 decl., 443/9 decl., 327, 443/7 decl. and 467. The expectation was that the playing field at the venue would level out after the first hour and make it a hard day’s work for the Indian bowlers. But, there was a bit of sewing movement for the rapids, while Ashwin managed to get it to turn very sharply very early in the day. Siraj, as Labuschagne pointed out, also managed to swing the ball up to 50th above the mark.

“There was a little bit more to him, the ball caught and you even saw it swing at the 50 mark, which is something you probably don’t normally see here at MCG at the time,” Labuschagne said.

Rahane held Siraj in check for the entirety of the first session, as the wetness on the surface prompted the skipper to play spin early. Ashwin made up for that strategy with three wickets in the morning session, while Siraj waited for his chance.

“He was really looking forward to bowling in the first session. He was waiting for his chance,” Jasprit Bumrah said of the rookie. “When he came in after the first session, not much was happening. So he threw with a lot of control. All of a sudden, he started to move a little bit. He tried to use his best.”