The much-awaited Border Gavaskar series began in Perth Australia yesterday with a fascinating first day of Test match cricket. With India batting first in the absence of Rohit Sharma it was always an uphill task on a bouncy WACA pitch. Expectedly Indian batsmen struggled against some quality bowling from the Aussies. Mitchell Starc and Company made the going tough for the Indian batting. Virat Kohli, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and others struggled against an unfaltering line and length implanted by the Australian bowlers. Bundled out for a paltry 150 the innings was marked with scintillating cameos by Rishabh Pant and Nitish Rana.
In return what we saw from the Indian bowlers is exactly why this series is often referred to as the mother of all rivalries. A fabulous unsparing spell of fast bowling by the makeshift skipper ensured that Aussies never found a sound footing with the lanky pacer taking three pricey wickets in the first spell. It was after a long time that Australian batsmen were found wanting in technique and resilience. Jaspreet Bumrah extracted good bounce from critical areas asking tough questions to the Australian batsmen – many of which they had no answers to.
The first day of the Perth Test has set the tone for the Border Gavaskar series. It will be a massively competitive series where the margin of error would be minimum. Indian veteran batsmen are aging with slowing reflexes and those slowing reflexes would be put to rest in Australia. However, the elephant in the room which everyone is missing is that if the Australian batsmen have any answer for the Indian bowling. If the first day of the test series is any indicator then the answer is a clear no.
In the same breath, we may add that the Australian team is a bunch of sun dried professionals who will spend quality time in the nets to ensure that they find answers to the questions posed by Indian bowlers in the first innings of the Perth Test.
Indian cricket team has had substantial success in the last few tours down under and they would like to take a few cues from those exploits to tame kangaroos in their own backyard. Exciting series ahead!
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