Swept away

Tribune News Service

Vinayak Padmadeo

New Delhi, February 19

Australia’s batting collapsed for the second game in a row as India won the second Test by six wickets to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy here today.

The visitors, who started the day at 61/1, lost nine wickets in just over 90 minutes to fold for 113. India then chased down the 115-run target with considerable ease — Cheteshwar Pujara hitting the winning runs in his 100th Test — to win their second successive Test in three days.

Ravindra Jadeja, who took seven wickets to finish with a 10-wicket match haul, was named the Player of the Match for the second successive time.

Coming into the Test after a heavy defeat in Nagpur, Australian skipper Patrick Cummins had talked about the need to counter the spin trio of Ravichandran Ashwin, Jadeja and Axar Patel by taking calculated risks and putting the pressure back on the home side. However, the visitors failed to get their shot selection right, heavily depending on the sweep shot. Their plan completely backfired as the sweep was not suited for the pitch, as Indian captain Rohit Sharma said after the match.

“On pitches like these, it is very important to have confidence in your own technique,” Sharma said. “The preparation for that becomes crucial. Ahead of the Nagpur Test, we had six-seven days and we utilised them really well. We worked on what shots to play and how to play them,” he added.

“We were playing in Nagpur on red soil and here we were batting on black soil. Here the sweep was not a very good option; stepping out to the spinners was probably the safer option. That is my view. All batters think differently about their batting and you just need to have confidence in the way you play,” he added.

Opening-over horror

The first over of the day, bowled by Ashwin, undid all the plans that Australia had of putting up a competitive total. Travis Head, who had shown intent last evening with a flurry of boundaries, edged a spinning delivery to wicketkeeper KS Bharat.

Six overs later, a panic-gripped Steve Smith was caught lbw by Ashwin after missing a sweep shot. Marnus Labuschagne played on a delivery that kept low from Jadeja. Labuschagne’s dismissal opened the floodgates as the visitors went from 95/3 to 97/7 in a space of 10 deliveries. Matt Renshaw, who came in as a concussion replacement for David Warner, was caught lbw by Ashwin, again trying to sweep. Peter Handscomb edged Jadeja to Virat Kohli at slip. On the next ball, Cummins was bowled after he missed a low slider trying to sweep. Wicketkeeper Alex Carey, Nathan Lyon and debutant Matthew Kuhnemann were also bowled by Jadeja. Carey and Kuhnemann fell trying the reverse-sweep.

India’s batters chose a different approach and played with a straight bat to complete a memorable win.

Kohli fastest to 25K runs

Virat Kohli added another feather in his cap as he became the sixth, and the fastest, batter in the world to score 25,000 runs across formats. Kohli now has 25,012 runs in 492 matches. The other stalwarts to have scored more than 25,000 runs across formats are Sachin Tendulkar (34,357 from 664 matches), Sri Lankans Kumar Sangakkara (28,016 from 594 matches) and Mahela Jayawardene (25,957 from 652 matches), Australia’s Ricky Ponting (27,483 from 560 matches) and South Africa’s Jacques Kallis (25,534 from 519 matches). The 34-year-old Kohli, who made his India debut in 2008, reached the milestone in his 549th inning, the least among the six batters. Tendulkar had taken 577 innings, while Ponting did it in 588 innings. Kohli also has a 53-plus average, the highest among the members of the exclusive club. Kohli has 8,195 runs from 106 Tests, 12,809 from 271 ODIs and 4,008 from 115 T20Is.

Australian legends shell-shocked

I’m disappointed, I’m shell-shocked, I’m angry about the way we went about our work today. It was panicky, frenetic batting. No one tried to get in there and stem the flow with some good defensive cricket. They were just getting out playing sweep shots, reverse sweeps to just about every ball — Allan Border, former australia captain

I can’t believe what I’ve just witnessed… they’re world class players. It’s a disaster because they’ve gone way over the edge in terms of their aggressive play — Matthew Hayden, former australia opener