Key events
2nd over: India 8-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 8) Cummins will share the new ball with Hazlewood. And KL cuts Rahul in half with a ball that buzzsaws in from outside off stump, Rahul yanking the bat across and finally gets it inside the seam line.
That makes 35 Tests, which started the wicket. Starc and Pedro Collins lead the way with three wickets. Twice for Geoff Arnold, Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev, and Suranga Lakmal.
1st over: India 8-1 (Rahul 0, Gill 8) So Shubman Gill has to open effectively, and so flashing through the hollow four cut! He could have been caught but he is in a gap. Then when Starc called for a fuller, he threw it to another one over mid-off. It had happened before.
That was the third time Starc took the wicket with the first ball. Rory Burns, of course, at the Gabba, and when he shows Big Frank – Dimuth Karunaratne – on the 2016 tour of Sri Lanka.
The first player to do so was Arthur Coningham, who had a fascinating and troubled life. We did a podcast about it sometime if you want to dig into it.
WICKET! Jaiswal lbw Starc 0
the wicket of the first ball of the match! Starc does, to rob a set of models. Awesome delivery with a new hot pink ball. Bowling to the left, the leg stump angles noticeably towards the thigh and back. Pitches in line with middle and leg, and continues to leg stump, hitting the flush on the ball-track. I don’t review Jaiswal.
We are ready…
Antiphons, the beginning of the bell is rung by Tim Maio. The name resonates with this country and South Australia. Australia bowled good services, 42 not out in a one-run loss to the West Indies in this case, and here in the last first-class match the shield won the final.
Harbhajan Singh and Ricky Ponting carry the trophy together. Memories of how Harbhajan Ponting was tortured in 2001. His streak went 0, 6, 0, 0, 11, 11 and fell through 11 to 0.
Pitch, all of you. What about the pitch? It looks decent. Not so grassy as some previous years. The curators here now trust the pink globe to shine, so as not to leave the pale foliage of the first years. This strip has a few stains on the edges but the straws for the business section are submissive. This color of grass, while it is still alive, may, as someone in the hand of the bowlers, move across the touch. And then there is hope. We will see.
Teams
Ashwin is back! It follows and the rest 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
Marcus Marsh
Alex Carey +
Cicero Starc
Pat Cummins *
Nathan Lyon
Scotus Boland
India toss and bat to win
Coin falls to visitors! Rohit is back as captain after Bumrah’s successful match deputation. He would like to set a high school.
Get in touch
Drop us a line one day, say hi, tell us what you’re up to. My email is in the sidebar.
In India there are so many ways that they could go out. We know that KL Rahul will remain more open, and Rohit Sharma will be “somewhere in the middle”, as he suggested in his captain’s interview yesterday. So Dhruv Jurel is an omission that would accommodate. Devdutt Padikkal will be one Shubman Gill if they make that change at No3.
Globes are more interesting to me. Ravichandran Ashwin has 536 Test wickets. Ravindra Jadeja has 319. Both left in Perth to Washington Sundar, who took 24 wickets. And of course I remember, he batted ok, but India’s great spinners can both bat. So, do they have to give Ashwin a chance in Adelaide? Ccelus left him on the bench.
Young all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy has probably done enough to make his spot, maybe at No7, then for live, Jasprit Bumrah is certainly playing, Mohammad Siraj may not know what is the gamble of India’s selection, and the main question is whether Akash has depth rather than pace and speed. He would prefer Harshit Rana, who worked well in Perth but could have been pickier in the conditions.
How to preview? I wrote one yesterday on the Australian bowlers that we should have.
The beginning
Geoff Lemon
Hello! We are here in Adelaide. It’s break time for Australian cricket. There was an explosive reaction after the home team was beaten by India in the first Test in Perth. The ten days between the battles helped them to rage, but the rage would soon return to the boil if the tide turned again for India. (Okay, we won’t stretch this metaphor any further.)
It’s a five-Test series, so going 2-0 down isn’t technically the end of it, but from memory teams have only come back from that deficit twice in Test history. So if Australia’s conflict looms again here, there are bigger issues. In their favor is the format of the day and night with the pink ball, which Australian players have seen more than any other country.
It stinks outside, as it has been for the last few days, with a forced blast of wind blowing through the city, but today the clouds have come over, which will give some of the balls. Maybe we can get some stormy precipitation at some point in the afternoon. Who knows. Late at night the sky flashed with dry lightning like a string of paper lanterns, but a drop fell.