India will be playing Australia in the third Test of the series and they will be hoping to put this series to bed once and for all that would also bag them the ticket to the WTC final as Oval awaits for the powerhouses to arrive in June.
However, India’s top-order had somehow got stuck in a rut and even before they are realising that what they have been smitten by, the reckoning Aussies are climbing all over them and leaving the lower-middle order exposed to the tapestry of tricks which somehow has been very efficiently nullified by the Australians.
On rank turners like the ones used in the first and the second Test, Australia came a cropper and in that second innings of the second Test, their batters ran into a shell before India would storm in and leave it rampaged. However, going by the antiquity of Indian cricket, the Indian batters were always very efficient batters of spin and now as things stand, it seems that somehow the Men in Blue are tasting their own medicine and it is downright bitter.
The first Test saw the entire Indian batting line up crumble except for Rohit Sharma before Jadeja and Axar could chime in with that crucial partnership to help India away from trouble. The second match was no different as the Indian batters would struggle to get the wheels rolling.
With all said and done, this has been a recurrent motif where spin has actually proven to be the undoing for Indian batters and it is a shocking spectacle. The patience has lacked and somehow the hurry to get the runs rolling has been devastatingly cataclysmic. This is exactly what is allowing Australia to at least leave India crammed for breath.
This isn’t a great sign, especially when the major strength in the sub-continent is that of playing spin, slowly imposing themselves upon the hapless bowlers and then taking them for a ride. Ideally, the key to playing spin includes a lot of aspects and out of all the pointers that you would want to go your way, one of the most important ones is footwork that has been slightly on the sluggish side.
Another crucial factor is that somehow the Indian batters are unable to comprehend the pace of the delivery and that isn’t the best of signs for the Indian cricket team. If they are to make the citadel in the sub-continent intact, things will shortly blow out of hand and they will be another Australia in the making.
Watch Kohli’s All Dismissals Against Spin Since 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edGNdIpPzJw
