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India's internal bickering, factional posturing and failed governance has come back to bite them on the field.
Tom Morris • January 3rd, 2025 8:02 pm
Hey Siri, show me a team which has gradually lost its way this summer.
India's internal bickering, factional posturing and failed governance has come back to bite them on the field.
It happened slowly, but here we are. India are a shell of a team they were in Perth. Maybe that rollicking win was the outlier? They did lose 3-0 to New Zealand after all.
Its two best counter-attacking middle order players - Ravi Jadeja and Rishabh Pant - played on Friday like they were hamstrung by directions from their coach, or at least scared of his wrath.
It was Jadeja’s slowest ever Test Innings, while Virat Kohli faced 69 balls without a boundary for the first time in his career.
Pant, who finished with a strike-rate of 40 today, was widely admonished for his dismissals in Melbourne. Externally, Sunil Gavaskar was particularly critical.
And if Indian reports are accurate, the feedback internally was just as forthright.
The trouble with someone like Pant, is if you take away his instinctiveness, you take away his game.
Yeah, Pant can grind for a bit. He did so at the MCG and today. But fundamentally he’s a see ball, hit ball operator.
He’s not dissimilar from Travis Head and Adam GIlchrist in that regard. Middle order left handers who can tinker around the edges, but essentially are what they are because the gear they boast is so destructive.
The challenge for a coach is to know when to prod, push and leave. Gautam Gambhir has tried to lay down the law. “Enough is enough” he’s reported to have said. He prodded.
Cricket doesn’t necessarily work like that, especially if the team lacks proper player driven leadership as this Indian team clearly does aside from Jasprit Bumrah. As much as you can’t have the inmates running the asylum, it’s equally true that an authoritarian, one-size fits all coach is counter-productive.
It's not up for debate that India batted poorly after winning the toss. They are increasingly looking somewhere between fragmented and fractured on the disharmony spectrum.
It’s the third Test in five when India has batted first and struggled, following Perth and Adelaide.
How can Kohli, an experienced player, continue to get out the same way? Is he being stubborn in his training? Are the bowlers just too good for him? Or is he just done?
It’s probably a mixture of all three. While his mind understands there is a gap at cover, point or sometimes both, his eye is no longer razor sharp and his hands fail him.
His irrational outburst at Channel 9 reporter Nat Yoannides - full disclosure, a colleague of mine - was the first sign he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Time and time again this has been reflected on the field, with poor decision making at similar deliveries becoming a pattern of his game.
The day one critique of India is conditional, of course. On two things.
One, if Jasprit Bumrah turns it on, the Test could swing violently.
Two, If the pitch turns out to be a minefield for both teams.
Both scenarios are possible either together or independently of one another. Simon Katich, who has seen more cricket at the SCG than most, has never seen as much grass on the pitch here in all his days, nor as much as bounce.
How many times were batters hit on Friday? In the head, in the groin, in the arm - that’s of some concern for Australia’s top order, as Usman Khawaja discovered first ball. It speaks to uneven bounce, which good judges will tell you is more challenging than a simple seaming deck.
On the weekend Australia has the chance to drive the knife in. If they can bat for two days in high 30s weather, India will be even less cohesive than they are now.
And that’s saying something.
