Border Gavaskar Trophy fondly referred as BGT is always known for its hype and this edition isn’t an exception either. Be it the visa request from Khawaja or the coffee powder luggage from Labuschagne or the ploy to use Mahesh Pithiya who had similar action to that of Ashwin , this year’s BGT had enough of highlighting even before the teams reached the venue .In the eve of the first test , there were few banters about the quality of the pitch , not only from the fans or the social media , but also from the sporting and journalist veterans from both of the countries.Such was the audacity for this series.
“The Day”
With all these build up, both the skippers headed to the toss. It was Pat Cummis who won the toss and decided to bat on what looked like a spin friendly wicket. KS Bharat and Surya Kumar Yadav made their debut for India , while Todd Murphy made his debut for Aussies.
Session 1 - Fall and Rebuild
To everyone’s surprise, Siraj struck in his very first ball by trapping Usman Khawaja in front . Before the shock waves could fade, Shami angled a delivery from outside off to Warner who was struck on his crease and was bowled through his defence.Aussies were clearly rattled by these two early blows and it needed a rebuilding from the top 2 test batsmen Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith respectively. They responded well to the situation and were cautious in the way they approached the bowlers, but never missed out on a scoring opportunity. The better of the two was Marnus , who had a very good sighting of the ball which was clearly evident in the way he played Ashwin. There was a delivery from Ashwin, which was bowled from around the wicket, and the trajectory took it further away from Labuschagne , who stepped down with the intent of playing the ball towards leg and at the last moment he opened the bat face towards offside , steered it towards widish midoff . To me it was the shot of the day from an Australian batting unit’s perspective .They both cautiously played out the Indian bowlers and made sure that they stayed at the crease on Lunch.
Session 2 : Pack of Cards
If the first session was a kind of grind and rebuild for the Aussies , the second session was an absolute breach of the fort from the Indian spinners especially from the comeback man Jadeja. He was able to beat Labuschagne outside edge through a wonderful off spinner and trapped Matt Renshaw in his very first delivery . Smith who countered spin by smashing cosecutive boundaries of Axar couldn’t provide his resistance to Jadeja who once again bowled Smith.Peter Handscomb and Alex Carey did some damage control, but the efforts couldn’t stop Aussies downfall as they were bundled out for a score of 177. Jadeja had a 5-fer in his comeback while the milestone man Ashwin became the second fastest to reach 450 wickets in test match cricket when he bowled Alex Carey through his reverse sweep.Ashwin ended with 3 wickets , while Shami and Siraj had one each.
Session 3 : Extension of Domination
If the previous two sessions were possessed by Indian bowlers , it was their openers who dominated the final session of the day especially skipper Rohit was fluent right from the first over when he managed to hit his counterpart for three boundaries which set the tone for the Indian batting. Rahul was very cautious while Rohit was enjoying his time in the middle as he never ceased to punish the half volleys thrown at him.The duo had yet another 50 run stand , but unfortunately at the stroke of the day , Rahul perished to debutant Todd Murphy when he played a half hearted defence to a fuller ball ,providing an easy return catch to Murphy who picked his first international scalp.Ashwin was sent as night watchman and he made sure that India doesn’t lose any wickets further. India finished with a score of 77/1 , trailing by 100 runs with Rohit Sharma batting comfortably on 56 at a healthy strike rate of 82. India would like to carry this confidence and look to bat deep on Day 2 .
Stay tuned for Day 2 updates….
Image Courtesy : bcci.tv
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