Sydney Test: Pant put body on the line, but did other batters do enough?

The anticipated exit of captain Rohit Sharma from the playing XI failed to bring about a change of luck in the first innings for India at Sydney. However, a total of 185 which looks inadequate on paper may not be quite so on one of the most unusually spicy wickets that this venue has seen, thus setting up another gripping contest.

If the pre-match drama revolved around whether Indian cricket would see the first-ever instance of a captain ‘opting out’ owing to lack of form, it was Rishabh Pant’s fortitude in the middle which became a talking point at the end of the day. Returning Down Under nearly four years after the dasher stole the limelight at the historic Gabba chase, Pant had been having a quiet time with the bat on this tour so far.

Now one of the mainstays of the batting line-up at number five, Pant had been getting the starts with 20s and 30s but the manner of his dismissal in both innings at Melbourne made him quite the fall guy. The common refrain was that India needed players who could bat per the situation rather than playing their ‘natural game’, and the buzz was the team management was inclined to give the disciplined Dhruv Jurel a break.

The team-first ethos, which head coach Gautam Gambhir keeps harping on, is exactly what Pant brought to the table during a stubborn innings of 40 off 98 deliveries, during which he reminded fans of Cheteshwar Pujara on previous tours as he took multiple body blows and had only three fours and a six to his credit. He finally fell to an impetuous stroke alright, but a mini-collapse in the lower middle order stopped the team from adding another possible, and valuable, 35-40 runs.   

‘’I think in this innings, I was not in a frame of mind where I wanted to take charge of the game because the wicket was doing too much,’’ Pant told the media later. ‘’And the kind of situation we were in and while playing inside I felt like I could do like play a little bit of defensive cricket — yes there is a time to attack but when you have to feel that from inside. I can’t just pre-meditate that I’m going to play this way whatever the game asked me to do on that given day, that’s what I try to do and that was the mindset.’’

Irrespective of the result of this Test, the Rohit Sharma effect will continue to cast a shadow on Indian cricket for a while. Until Melbourne, the scanner was on both him and Virat Kohli with calls for their retirement getting louder, but from Sydney onward, the pressure will be on the latter to show that there is still a good few years of red-ball cricket left in him. The master batter looked disciplined in his leaves during his effort of 17 off 69 balls, until a peach of a delivery from back of a length from Scott Boland induced a half-hearted jab for him to be caught behind.

Statistics will say that Kohli has been dismissed seven times while chasing deliveries outside the off stump in the series – and the famous Sachin Tendulkar’s masterclass of 241 where he didn’t hit a single cover drive will again be brought up. This is not the way he would have wanted his likely last tour of Australia to pan out but then, sport doesn’t offer you any guarantee for fairytale endings.

 Come Day II, captain Jasprit Bumrah – who got involved in a skirmish with the young but cocky opener Sam Konstas during his final over – will want to strike early blows at the Australians. He had the last laugh when he squared up Usman Khawaja with the final ball of the day and looked unusually charged up during the send-off.

If Mohammed Siraj and Prasiddh Krishna can provide him the right back-up, then we could have quite a weekend on our hands!