A hard-grinding, gritty partnership of 82* (202) between Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith gave Australia a sigh of relief as the batters walked into Lunch on Day 1 of the first Test in Nagpur of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against India at the score of 76/2 after being in trouble at 2/2 inside 3 overs.
Australia’s two best batsmen, and also ranked 1 and 2 respectively in the ICC Test batsmen ranking, Labuschagne remained unbeaten on 47 and Smith on 19 as the pair had kept the Indian spinners at bay after the two pacers Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami had dismissed openers Usman Khawaja and David Warner, respectively, early in the innings following Pat Cummins’ decision to win the toss and elect to bat first.
The couple, though, were also aided by some luck. Steve Smith was dropped at first slip by Virat Kohli off Axar Patel’s bowling, a tough catch, but which Kohli really should have done better with his slip technique where he gets up on his feet higher than an ideal slip fielder should; Marnus, too, inside-edged one of Jadeja’s delivery that was heading straight onto his pads.
On the first ball of the 16th over from Axar, when Steve Smith was just on 6 runs, the batter went for an expansive drive to a full delivery outside off-stump. However, he outside-edged it and the ball flew to the right of Kohli who was positioned at first slip.
Kohli got his hand on the ball, but couldn’t grab it and hold onto it. This drop from Virat Kohli could prove costly as Steve Smith has a penchant of scoring big against India, and being given such a reprieve, on a first day of a Test match, isn’t what India wanted to gift to one of the all-time greats.
Kohli’s rection was typical: shocked.
IND vs AUS Watch Virat Kohli’s reaction after dropping Steve Smith:
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Teams:
Australia (Playing XI): David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Alex Carey(w), Pat Cummins(c), Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Scott Boland
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Srikar Bharat(w), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj
