CHENNAI: "We were not good enough with the bat." That was India captain Rohit Sharma on Sunday afternoon attempting to sum up their ten-wicket loss against Australia in the pink ball Test at Adelaide.
At this point, it is a phrase Rohit had to repeat after every Test he has captained since October 16. It all began on that gloomy Bengaluru day where he chose to face the media after India crumbled for 46 runs in the first innings against New Zealand. From day two evening till day three at the Adelaide Oval, there hasn't been a day where Rohit has walked back off the field at stumps knowing that they had a good day at work.
From admitting that he was wrong in Bengaluru, to acknowledging that they were not good enough in Adelaide, Rohit had accepted the defeat on the face of it in a very pragmatic, matter-of-fact manner. While it looked good to hear the captain own his mistakes in Bengaluru, hearing very similar things after every match since has led to a perception of whether he and the team are not learning from the things that they did wrong.
Come back to Adelaide again. After opting to bat first on day one, India did not last more than two sessions. The challenge of playing pink ball is well established, but the manner in which India's batting failed — similar kinds of dismissals among some of them, captain's poor form with the bat this time in a new position — meant there was a clear pattern.
Jasprit Bumrah cannot conjure magic every time the team gets out for a below-par score and that is exactly what happened here. India were all out in 44.1 overs, but barring Bumrah, others could not replicate a similar kind of success and that cost them dearly. The second innings was also the same story, except this time they were staring down a barrel (read the 157-run lead Australia had on them).
If you are not going to spend more than 81 overs in the middle across both innings (44.1 and 36.5), there is no way on earth you can come back into the contest. So when Rishabh Pant and Nitish K Reddy started day three, they were living on borrowed time. For them, to pull India out of that hole, they would have had to replicate something similar to Kolkata 2001 or Adelaide 2003. In the end, Pat Cummins took five wickets and Australia walked away with a win, levelling the series 1-1.
The good thing is that India has ample time to come back from this deficit in the five-match series. Their next stop is Brisbane and in less than a week, they will be on the field again. That could be the reason why Rohit is hopeful. "There's a way for us to get back into the game. We need to find that within ourselves, how we need to do that. There are a lot of individuals in that dressing room who have played a lot of cricket, won a lot of games, have come back from difficult situations in the past. We hope that everyone stands up to that challenge and takes the team through whenever it's required," he said.
The next ten days will tell whether they did or we hear another "not good enough" quote from Rohit.