Key events
6th over: India 15-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 14) Cummins then, with three slips and a gully set quite close to them. Rahul essays the leave-play shot, getting the ball down off the face into the cordon while holding the bat in his backlift. Then drops a rising ball off the sticker down near his feet, unsure where it went at first. Tough over.
5th over: India 15-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 14) Can’t stop Gill scoring! On the up, but he leans into a cover drive with minimal follow-through and connects perfectly. Risk in the stroke but it brings him four. There’s a Starc overstep in the over as well.
4th over: India 10-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 10) Cummins making the ball sing again! Beats the edge a couple of times. But KL is picking up where he left off in Perth, letting those balls pass him without chasing them, leaving the safer wider ones, defending where he can. Soaking up the quality early over.
Rowan Sweeney is editing on the fly. “Last summer seems like a rather wasted opportunity to blood new talent, and this series could get a little brutal for Australia. I’m picking Jaiswal to make anot Never mind, then. How’s your day going, Geoff?”
It took a long time for this game to start, but glad to be underway.
3rd over: India 10-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 10) Starc to continue, nearly gets Gill with a rising ball on a narrow angle across, but Gill doesn’t edge it. Does drive a brace, opening the face through cover. Such a productive scorer even under pressure.
Andrew Benton emails in. “Have Australia reset/rebooted themselves these past ten days, and if so, how? Do they have a new gameplan, have they made some tweaks for victory? Wicket. Oh. They do, and have.”
Well, they got Jaiswal for a duck in the first innings in Perth, too, and it didn’t much help them when he made a massive ton in the second.
2nd over: India 8-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 8) Cummins will share the new ball, with Hazlewood out. And he cuts KL Rahul in half with a ball that buzzsaws in from outside the off stump, Rahul yanking the bat across and eventually getting it inside the line of the seam movement.
That makes 35 Tests that have started with a wicket. Starc and Pedro Collins the leaders with three instances. Twice for Geoff Arnold, Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev, and Suranga Lakmal.
1st over: India 8-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 8) So Shubman Gill effectively has to open, and he does so by flashing a cut through gully for four! Might have carried to a catcher but it’s in the gap. Then when Starc pitches fuller he’s driven through mid off for another. Quite the eventful first over.
That’s the third time Starc has taken a wicket with the first ball of the match. Rory Burns, of course, at the Gabba, and when he was monstering Big Frank – Dimuth Karunaratne – during the 2016 tour of Sri Lanka.
The first player to do it was Arthur Coningham, who had a fascinating troubled life. We did a Story Time podcast about him if you want to dig that out.
WICKET! Jaiswal lbw Starc 0
Wicket first ball of the match! Starc does it, as the stattos scramble for the precedents. A fierce delivery with the new hot-pink ball. Bowling to a left-hander, it angles towards leg stump and then swings back markedly. Pitches in line with middle and leg, and continues towards leg stump, hitting it flush on the ball-tracking. Jaiswal doesn’t review.
We’re underway…
The anthems, then the commencement bell is rung by Tim May. A name that rings out in concert with this ground and with South Australian. Bowled good offies for Australia, 42 not out in the one-run loss to West Indies on this ground, and won the Shield final here in his last first-class match.
Harbhajan Singh and Ricky Ponting carry the trophy out together. Memories of how Harbhajan tormented Ponting in 2001. His series went 0, 6, 0, 0, 11, and during the 11 he got dropped on 0.
The pitch, you all cry. What about the pitch? It looks decent. Not as grassy as some in previous years. The curators here trust the pink ball now to keep its shine, so they don’t leave the luxuriant leafage of the first few years. This strip has a few tinges down the edges but is straw toned down the business section. The grass here does go that colour while it’s still alive though, so there might be some grip for the bowlers, make it move sideways a touch. And then there’s the hope of swing. We’ll see.
Teams
Ashwin is back! And the rest goes as expected.
India
KL Rahul
Yashasvi Jaiswal
Shubman Gill
Virat Kohli
Rishabh Pant +
Rohit Sharma *
Nitish Kumar Reddy
Ravichandran Ashwin
Harshit Rana
Mohammed Siraj
Jasprit Bumrah
Australia
Nathan McSweeney
Usman Khawaja
Marnus Labuschagne
Steve Smith
Travis Head
Mitchell Marsh
Alex Carey +
Mitchell Starc
Pat Cummins *
Nathan Lyon
Scott Boland
India win the toss and bat
The coin falls for the visitors! Rohit is back as skipper after Bumrah’s successful match deputising. He wants to put up a score.
Get in touch
Drop us a line any time through the day, say hello, tell me what you’re up to. My email is in the sidebar.
As for India, there are so many ways that could go. We now know that KL Rahul will remain as opener, and Rohit Sharma will bat “somewhere in the middle,” as he offered yesterday at his captain’s press conference. So Dhruv Jurel is the omission that would accommodate that. Devdutt Padikkal will be the one for Shubman Gill if they make that change at No3.
The bowling is more interesting to me. Ravichandran Ashwin has 536 Test wickets. Ravindra Jadeja has 319. They were both left out in Perth for Washington Sundar, who has 24 wickets. And yeah, he batted ok, but India’s great spinners can both bat as well. So, surely they have to give Ashwin a chance in Adelaide? It’s criminal leaving him on the bench.
Young all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy probably did enough to keep his spot, maybe at No7, then for the quicks, Jasprit Bumrah certainly plays, Mohammad Siraj should although you never know what India’s selection gambles may be, and the main question is whether they might prefer the swing of Akash Deep rather than the pace and bounce of Harshit Rana, which worked well in Perth but might have been a pick based on conditions.
How about a preview? I wrote one yesterday focusing on the Australian bowlers, let’s have that.
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
Hello! Here we are in Adelaide. It’s crunch time for Australian cricket. The reaction was explosive after the home team got hammered by India in Perth in the first Test. Having ten days between engagements has helped things simmer down, but that simmer will soon return to a boil if India turn up the heat again. (Ok, we’ll not stretch this metaphor any further.)
It’s a five-Test series, so going 2-0 down is not technically the end of it, but from memory teams have only come back from that deficit twice in Test history. So if Australia’s struggling batting gets rocked again here, they’re in major strife. In their favour is the day-night format with the pink ball, which Australian players have seen more of than those of any other country.
It’s stinking hot outside, as it has been the last few days, with a fan-forced oven sort of wind blustering across the city, but the clouds have come over today, which will give some respite to the side bowling. We may have some stormy precipitation at some stage in the afternoon. Who knows. Late last night the sky was flickering with dry lightning like a series of paper lanterns, but nary a drop fell.
