He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword – This phrase summed up the Indian debacle in the third Test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2023 at Indore. Yet another three-day Test match saddened the Test match enthusiasts.
Losing the toss, two umpiring errors in the first over which were not reviewed, Australians got all wrong at the start of this Test match under the stand in captain Smith. But the early introduction of spin turned the fortunes. Rohith Sharma failed to capitalize on the slice of luck he had in the first over and got stumped in his effort to dominate the Australian spinners. Reckless stroke from the captain opened the Indian gates and the Australian spinners never had to look back. The ball that turned square to castle Pujara, made everyone wonder whether this pitch was an underprepared one, as this Test match was quickly arranged one after being shifted from Dharamshala. Unlike the first two Tests, there was no rear guard action from the tail and Kuhnemann and Lyon finished off the Indian innings in the 34th over for 109 on the first day.
Australia lost Travis Head early and when Labuschagne got bowled by Jadeja off a no ball, Australians looked like repeating the mistakes they did, in the first two Tests. But Usman Khawaja anchored the Australian innings and at 186 for 4, they were heading for a formidable total. But Umesh Yadav playing in place of Shami who was rested, proved his worth and Australians were bundled out for 197. The lead of 88 was a match winning one on this crumbling pitch and it was evident that unless India cleared this deficit with minimum loss of wickets, there was no chance of an Indian victory.
Lyon was on song and Indian batters apart from Pujara and Shreyas Iyer who counter attacked, could not put up any resistance. Both Pujara and Iyer got out to some outstanding catching. Indians were restricted to 163 and a lead of 75 was never a match winning one unless some miracle happened, and that was what the Indian spectators were expecting on the third day morning. Ashwin did not let them down by consuming Usman Khawaja on the first over. Indian spinners strangled Australian batsmen till the 10th over when the umpires decided to change the ball. Though Ashwin was not happy with the changed ball, Australians cut loose and broke the Indian shackles. A comfortable 9 wicket victory announced the Australian comeback in this four Test series.
Bad, Worse, Worst, this is how any Test cricket follower will rate the quality of pitches in the last 3 Tests, and all these three-day Test matches provided a bad advertisement for Test cricket in India. It was very evident that India won the first two Test matches due to the excellence of Indian spinning trio and there was definite weakness in Indian batting. Weakness of Indian batsmen got exposed even after batting first in a pitch tailored for Indian spinners. Australians have overcome the mental block they were having in the first two Tests and under Smith, with their tail up, look all set to square the series. Majority of the current generation Indian Test batsmen don’t have the technique to survive in tailor made spinning tracks and BCCI needs to stop this policy of preparing doctored pitches after learning lessons from this self-made disaster.
