When 21-year-old Nitish Kumar Reddy, playing only the second Test match of his career, is the top scorer in both your innings, there is a serious problem in your batting department.

India have been bowled out for 180 or less in three of their four innings so far on this tour and Reddy has been the top scorer in all three of them.

While Jaiswal, Kohli and KL Rahul scored runs in India's second innings in Perth, it has to be acknowledged that those were the best batting conditions of the series so far. And when things got challenging the entire unit failed – in both the first day of testing and the third session under lights on day two in Adelaide.

Returning captain Rohit Sharma, who according to his fans, "selflessly" gave up his opening role and moved down the middle order, scored 3 and 6 in Adelaide and looked completely out of touch against the Australian fast bowlers .

While Travis Head was scoring his fastest Test century, Rohit looked even more clueless as a captain. This is the third time that Head has scored a century in international cricket since 2023 when Rohit was leading the Indian team.

Still, Rohit clearly hasn't learned how to stop the head. The criticism leveled at Rohit and the bowlers in the ICC WTC 2021-23 final and the World Cup 2023 final was the lack of use of short balls and bouncers to the head.

It was the same in Adelaide, as the Indian bowlers did not bowl bouncers consistently and instead cut, drove and lofted balls outside the off-stump and flicked them easily onto the pads.

Bumrah bowled only four overs in the first session of the second day.
The most shocking of captain Rohit Sharma's strategic decisions was that Bumrah bowled only four overs in the first session of the second day.

In his first spell on the second day, Bumrah dismissed Nathan McSweeney and Steve Smith. And then he was not only surprisingly dropped from the attack, but surprisingly he did not bowl at all for the rest of the first session.

After this, Head bowled out Siraj, Rana and Ashwin and reached 53(67) by the end of the session. That was set by then and became even more difficult in the second session.

It is still puzzling why Bumrah bowled only four overs in that morning session, whereas in Perth he had bowled 7-8 overs. With Head new to the crease, India should have attacked the left-handed batsman with his main weapon.

After the match, captain Rohit Sharma will have to answer many questions.

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3 reasons why India lost the Adelaide Test

Dec 8, 2024 5:42 AM

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