The captain’s brilliance with the bat and the excellence at home of the three spin-bowling all-rounders was key to India’s big win.
India’s spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja combined to dismiss Australia for 91 inside one session of the third day’s play in Nagpur as the hosts took a 1-0 lead in the four-match Border-Gavaskar series. And after India’s win by an innings and 132 runs, Ashwin took a dig at the pre-match chatter about the pitch.
In a chat with the captain Rohit Sharma, Ashwin asked: “Pitch talk is the real favourite topic on social media, especially for touring teams. When you were batting, not one ball nicked off and went to silly point or short leg. You guys did not look in trouble. What is the secret? Is it good batsmanship or do we play on a different pitch?”
Ashwin is not wrong. Preceding the days before the first Test, the discourse revolved pitch doctoring, raging turners. The build-up to an exciting series was made on assumptions before even a ball had been bowled.
Sure, the match was over inside three days but was it down to the pitch being a minefield or being unfit for batting? Rohit put on a masterclass of controlled aggression during his solid 120 in the first innings to illustrate that it was not the case.
In the post-match press conference, he was straightforward about the wicket that was dished out in Nagpur and clarified that there weren’t any real demons in the pitch. He said, “The pitch was good. We were prepared to have hard days of bowling and spending time on the field sessions after sessions. We never thought they will get bowled out in a session. The pitch became slow and slow and there was not much bounce in the pitch so it was a bit of surprise for us.”
It is safe to say that India’s dominating performance was down to preparation, experience but also application. It can be argued that Australia, in theory, did not do much wrong when it came to preparation. After deciding to skip the tour games ahead of the tour because they apparently do not provide enough exposure to tackle real pitches for the series, Australia trained in Sydney on spin-friendly tracks prior to the series, replicating the conditions they were likely to face in India.
