Indian cricket team batter Virat Kohli© AFP
Cheteshwar Pujara believes that India should have batted much better on Day 1 of the pink-ball Test against Australia in Adelaide after the Rohit Sharma-led side was bundled out for just 180. Shubman Gill and KL Rahul put up a 69-run stand but the visitors kept losing wickets at regular intervals. During his analysis, Pujara namedropped star batter Virat Kohli who failed to impress as he was dismissed for just 7. Pujara said that India should have scored 250 to 275 on the Adelaide pitch and added that although the Indian bowlers hit the right length, it did not work out well for them.
“I think we could have batted a lot better. It was a pitch where we should have got 250 to 275. So we are 70-80 runs behind. Credit goes to the Aussie bowlers because the way they bowled. They pitched the ball up. Their lengths were much better than our bowlers.”
“I do understand that our bowlers did try to hit the same length, which wasn’t the ideal length. But if you look at the Aussie bowlers’ length, initially they mixed it up when there wasn’t help when they started pitching up,” Pujara said on Star Sports.
Pujara explained that India should have worked on building partnerships in order to negate the threat of Australia’s bowling but they ended up losing wickets at regular intervals.
“They went to back of length. They started bowling between 6 to 8 meters and that’s where we lost a couple of wickets in the middle order. KL Rahul and Virat, both of them got out two back of the length deliveries. And the line was still just over 4th stump, which was an ideal line on this pitch.”
“So I found that I know we could have batted a lot better on this pitch, where we had partnerships, but after one partnership, we kept on losing wickets,” the Indian cricket team batter explained.
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