India got bowled out for 36 and suffered a humiliating 8-wicket defeat in the Adelaide Test.
Team India suffered a humiliating 8-wicket defeat at the hands of Australia in the first Test at the Adelaide Oval.
The visitors had a first innings lead of 53 runs but the Australian pacers, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins, ran through the Indian batting line-up in the first session on Day 3 to change the course of the game.
Hazlewood (5 for 8) and Cummins (4 for 21) took all the wickets between them as India recorded their lowest ever Test score of 36/9 (with Mohammad Shami retired hurt) in the second innings.
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Commenting on India’s abysmal batting performance, former Pakistan captain Ramiz Raja said that the tourists lacked a positive intent while facing the Aussie attack.
“No one could have predicted that the third day of the Adelaide Test will be a statistical nightmare for India. It was a massive reality check for the Indian batting line-up. There were a lot of problems. Batting against the bounce was not good, the positive intent was not seen, and this Indian batting line-up’s capability is probably only to disappoint you,” Raja stated in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
According to Ramiz, the current Indian batting line-up is much weaker than the one that played in 2018-19 series in Australia.
“This batting line-up is weaker if we compare it to the previous tour’s because India is the only team from the sub-continent that has gone to Australia, and made them struggle and a lot of credit for that has to be given to their strong batting performances,” Raja said.
“But here there are flaws and gaps in this batting line-up. Some of them have technical issues and for some others, their batting cannot cope against quality fast bowling, and that was what was seen,” he pointed out
The cricketer-turned-commentator also had special praise reserved for the Australia bowling attack.
“All the credit will have to be given to the Australian bowlers. They are all tall bowlers; they bowled the hard lengths, and the ball moved enough to take the outside edge of the bat. They bowled at the length where you couldn’t play the ball on the front foot or the back foot. And they had problems against bounce,” Raja remarked.
“If you have one or two more players like Virat Kohli, then you could have survived. But Virat Kohli’s failure suggests that Australia bowled very well,” he concluded.