SYDNEY: It was around 1.20 PM on Saturday at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Jasprit Bumrah, India’s captain for the match, left the fielding after bowling his tenth over of the innings. At that point, Australia were 111/5 with Alex Carey and Beau Webster in the middle.
India, for the first session and even after, kept asking questions consistently, on point about their plans for Travis Head or Steve Smith with every single bowler chipping in. Such were the conditions on offer that they kept hitting the right areas and let the ball do the rest.
However, when Bumrah walked off the field, it got alarm bells ringing. Even more so when about 40 minutes later, he left the dressing room and the stadium in a car for scans before coming back two and a half hours later. Although Prasidh Krishna would later confirm that Bumrah has back spasms and is being monitored by the medical team, at that time no one knew what was happening.
Have the worst fears come true? Is Bumrah done for the rest of the match? Who will they turn to now? Questions lingered as Shubham Gill seemed to be setting the field in the middle. Not for long though. Virat Kohli soon took charge of the proceedings. Standing at first slip, the former Indian captain, seemed to be the de facto in charge. He was setting fields and charging up the players, getting involved more than he ever had on this tour.
And it was not just him. Mohammed Siraj rose to the occasion, and more importantly, so did Prasidh Krishna who had come in as an injury replacement for Akash Deep. Playing his first game of the tour, Prasidh used his height to extract extra bounce off the surface. The first ball he bowled in the match took Steve Smith by surprise, hitting him on the glove. Even though he gave a few boundary balls in the first session, Prasidh got only better in the second. He hit the right lengths, kept asking questions and the reward came in the form of Smith's dismissal. He followed it up with another, coming around the wicket to get rid of Alex Carey getting Australia down to 137/6. However, the job was not done and it was Nitish K Reddy’s turn to step up. He had no choice but to do so with Bumrah not even in the venue to come back in.
He teased Pat Cummins with a full delivery that was hit for four before pulling the length back and getting some extra bounce to induce the outside edge. Reddy followed up with a short ball from around the wicket to Mitchell Starc and soon Australia were all out for 181. “When I got back at lunch, I actually looked at where I was bowling, the length that I was bowling, but my perception of the length that I wanted to bowl was slightly different. The analyst and I sat together and then we had a better idea of what my reference point is when I am coming into the next spell and that really helped,” Prasidh said.
Kohli led the team off the field and they seemed all charged up to get going. It was visible when Yashasvi Jaiswal smashed 16 runs off the first over from Starc. He and India knew the best way to survive on this surface was to attack. The ball was keeping up and down and India had to take the game head on, especially knowing Scott Boland was going to consistently hit that length. Before even the Victorian came on, India had raced to 33/0 in five overs.
However, it all stopped when Boland started his spell. As he has been doing every time he runs in, Boland kept hitting that one spot on the fifth length line in mid-130KPH. Such has been his relentlessness that he had not bowled a single bad over this series. It took him nine balls to break through KL Rahul’s defences. Another seven balls later, Boland castled Jaiswal. Kohli came in trying to play through the leg side curbing out his off-side runs. But he couldn’t resist a good delivery from Boland fended at it.
It was a cut, copy and paste of the first innings dismissal. India were 59/3 staring at another collapse. But Rishabh Pant smashed a maddening 61 from 33 balls, and he got to his fifty in 29, in complete contrast to the way he batted. Watching it from outside, even Gill got caught up and was dismissed trying to take on Webster. Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar held them through for the rest of the day.
By the time stumps were drawn, India were 141/6, leading by 145 runs. It might not be enough on this wicket as Prasidh admitted, India would want as much as they can before going in, especially not knowing whether or not Bumrah will bowl again. That being said, on a surface that has enough assistance India will come out all guns blazing. “The team is really pumped up. You could see the way we were going after even when we were bowling, the way that we were moving between overs. I think we are really confident about the plans that we have in mind and the skill set that we have. So we are really here for the fight,” Prasidh said.
Day three, which could also be the last day of the series, will tell us who is the last person standing.
