PUNE : Monumental anti-climax, tried and tested plan going horribly wrong and rude awakening instead of a strong start, there are several ways of looking at India’s second biggest defeat in terms of runs on home soil.
If there were hints of things going astray in Australia’s last-wicket partnership on the first evening, the collapse on the second afternoon more or less confirmed what was unfolding. What surprised still in India’s first home defeat after 20 Tests was the manner of caving in. Choosing a turner, batsmen accustomed to such conditions could only consume 74 overs across two innings. Australia played 94.5 and 87.
Virat Kohli kept it simple while summing up what went wrong. “We put ourselves under a lot of pressure after the first innings. Conceding a lead of 155 on that wicket is criminal. Had we got close enough to their total, our mindset would have been different. Our batsmen put us in a position where it was very difficult to come back into the game. There were too many application and judgement errors.”
It was the biggest shock in world cricket in recent times that the team averaging 514 in the first innings over the last nine matches would struggle to last a session against a spinner playing his first Test in India. Such setbacks can break morale and hand psychological advantage to the opponent. But Kohli wasn’t looking that far.
“Like you shouldn’t get overexcited when you win, reaction to losses should be the same. We take failures as an opportunity to learn.
The last time we had a performance like this (in Sri Lanka in 2015), we had the most outstanding run after that. Maybe we needed this for a reality check to understand the things we need to work on. I’m sure we’ll come back and put pressure on Australia in the next Test.”
Looking at the difference of the totals of the teams in the two innings, it’s tempting to say that Indian spinners failed. But that wouldn’t be fair because they beat the edge a number of times without hitting it. Steve Smith got a number of lives on way to his century in the second innings. A combination of bad batting and bad luck can be disastrous.
“I’m not blaming the bowlers at all... But you don’t deserve to win if you drop catches and bat like that,” said Kohli, counting himself among batsmen who made application errors. With two extra days to reboot, Kohli’s boys must also do something to get this out of their system.