To Pat Cummins’ cupboard goes the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, a prize as coveted as the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup titles won by his Australian team in 2023. Man to man, Australia had as many issues as the Indian team did across these five Test matches, and yet it was Cummins’ team that played better cricket, displayed more discipline and tenacity, and grabbed opportunities from slivers of hope.
Before we get into the negative, lets quickly list the three silver linings for India in this series. Jasprit Bumrah’s perseverance was sublime, and, on this tour, he cemented his name as an all-time great. He was the main reason that India won in Perth and a major factor in India competing in the four other matches. Yashasvi Jaiswal ended his first trip to Australia with 391 runs at an average of 43.44, with a superb 161 in Perth and two scores in the eighties in Melbourne. The allrounder Reddy played all five Tests and came in second to Jaiswal with 298 at 37, hitting a maiden century at the MCG.
The positives end there. India didn’t exactly hand over the BGT on a platter to Australia, because Bumrah was brilliant all series, but the truth is that this team didn’t compete consistently. Bumrah took 32 wickets at 13 runs apiece from almost 152 overs, resulting in him leaving the field on day two of the final Test for scans, never to return during that match. The other eight Indian bowlers took 48 at 37 runs per wicket.
India’s two top-scorers of the tour were a 23-year-old and a 22-year-old, both playing in Australia for the first time. The team’s two most senior cricketers in Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli averaged 6.20 and 23.75 respectively. The third most was shunted around the top order and ended up with a series batting average of 30, which many will say with shrugged shoulders is a typical KL Rahul series: start well, then fade away sharply.
Kohli averaged under 24 in these five Tests – by far his lowest for any series of five matches, lower than the 27 he averaged in England in 2020-21 – but subtract an even unbeaten 100 in the second innings in Perth and he managed 90 runs from eight innings. That’s an average of 11.25 if you discount that century, but more than the damning stats is Kohli’s inability – or is it stubbornness? – to fix his problems outside off stump. Each of his eight dismissals in Australia were to shots played to pacers when the ball landed on and outside off stump.
Going back to mid-2021, Kohli has been out 24 times to pacers in similar manner, and in these three and a half years he’s average under 33 in Test cricket. Still, Brand Kohli endures and hardly anyone of stature questions this prolonged slump and failure to curb his enthusiasm outside off stump. Full marks to former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar for bucking the shallow trend.
One reason for Australia’s success in this BGT is their near complete shutdown of Rishabh Pant, a maverick cricketer who has tormented them like few have in the past several years. In his first tour of Australia back in 2018-19 when Kohli’s team became the first Asian side to win a Test series there, Pant averaged 58. During Covid, when the BGT was again won on Australian soil, Pant averaged 68.50 with sublime innings in Sydney and Brisbane.
This time around, Pant was reduced to an average of 28 with one half-century in five Tests. Australia used to play Nathan Lyon just to get Pant, it so often seemed, but in this series the pacers, particularly the scheming genius called Cummins, systematically targeted Pant. Yes, his two daft shots at the MCG were a big reason for India’s defeat, but there is no discrediting the thinking that went into Australia’s plans to keep Pant quiet.
The wider picture, however, is of a batting lineup that was just not equipped, collectively, to cope with tough tracks and a quality pace attack. Of their nine completed innings, six did not reach 200.
It didn’t help that India picked the wrong 11 in four of five Tests. Where Kohli and Shastri used to put a premium on five specialist bowlers – including, at times, four pacers – the Rohit-Gautam Gambhir combination repeatedly masked over a faltering batting lineup by playing allrounders, up to three in one 11, bizarrely. In a game tailormade for specialist cricketers, this Indian team management valued nominal batting cover in the form of Nitish Reddy, Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja.
How can anyone justify playing two spinners on a bizarrely green SCG track, where the third-fastest result at the iconic venue was witnessed? Why was Shubman Gill, as awful as he was during this series, dropped to accommodate Rohit? Why was Rahul the sacrificial lamb when Rohit suddenly decided to open again? Why did it take so long for the management to play Prasidh Krishna? Why was Akash Deep’s control not valued until the third Test?
No answers from the team. Instead, denial, stubbornness and banal statements. Clearly all is not well inside this Indian team, and with no Test cricket until the third week of June, this Indian team and the selectors have plenty of work on their hands. Will fading stars and non-performing youngsters be picked for five Tests in England based on Champions Trophy and IPL form?
In between the chaos, Ravichandran Ashwin announced he was retiring from international cricket and flew back to India the next day, with two Tests still to go in the series. Murmurs of unrest grew louder, and dressing room chats were leaked. Rohit, enduring his worst phase a Test cricketer and averaging the lowest for any captain to tour Australia, ‘opted to rest’ for the Sydney Test in an unprecedented move, and then on day two orchestrated a PR stunt in which he brazenly stated that he was not going anywhere anytime soon.
A day later, India were smashed before tea on day three of the Sydney Test to surrender the BGT for the first time since 2017 and officially – though we all knew it was impossible – crash out of the WTC final race. Egos have been further bruised, reputations have been damaged and the promise of certain players has diminished drastically. Six months down the line in England, it’s going to be very interesting to see what line the team management tows.
