Mitchell Starc’s rampant bowling on the first day of the second Test saw Australia crash through the Indian batting line-up at the Adelaide Oval on Friday. His brilliant bowling effort prompted former Australia opening batter Matthew Hayden to label the left-arm pacer as a ‘magician with the pink ball’. “He has that scrambled seam delivery that goes across the right-hander, but when he does have that ability-which he did-I must admit I was a little surprised. I’ve never really seen the pink ball swing into the sort of 40th over and so aggressively swing as well. By that stage, he used a really important word, and it’s a bit of an underrated word as well, and that’s momentum,” Hayden told Star Sports at the end of the day’s play in Adelaide.
“It was all in favour of India. A difficult position to come back from in life and sport is those opportunities to wrestle back momentum, and Mitchell Starc did that in only the way he can-when the lights are like the way they are and with that beautiful-coloured ball in his hand. He’s just a magician with the Pink Ball,” he said.
Under overcast skies, Starc picked his best-ever Test figures of 6-48, including dismissing Yashasvi Jaiswal with the very first ball of the game in front of a record 50,186 supporters. After that, India built their innings on the base of a 69-run partnership between KL Rahul and Shubman Gill. But Starc struck again with his double strike, removing Rahul and then Virat Kohli just before the end of the first session to hand the hosts the advantage.
After a disappointing first innings, India came out to bowl under the evening sky at Adelaide and went on to get Usman Khawaja’s wicket for 13 runs, after he was caught by Rohit Sharma off Bumrah’s delivery.
At stumps, Nathan McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne, unbeaten on 38 and 20 respectively, blunted India’s bowlers in a solid show of discipline and defence in a tricky phase to stitch an unbroken 62-run stand for the second wicket and helped Australia reach 86/1 in 33 overs and trail the visitors’ by 94 runs.
Former India captain and opening batter Sunil Gavaskar highlighted what the Indian bowlers will need to focus on. “They have to make the batters play as much as they can. And this is what happens when you make the batters play as much as you can. You can set them up by bowling a couple of deliveries outside and then get the ball to move back in, as it did to Nathan McSweeney in the Perth Test, or Labuschagne in the Perth Test, like what Bumrah did. The Indian bowlers have not really used the pink ball as well as they should have,” said Gavaskar on Star Sports.
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