By Ashok Kumar with the help of ESPN
Australia 337 (Head 140, Labuschagne 64, Bumrah 4-61, Siraj 4-98) and 19 for 0 beat India 180 (Reddy 42, Starc 6-48, Cummins 2-41) and 175 (Reddy 42, Cummins 5-57, Boland 3-51) by ten wickets
(Pictures:- courtesy Cricket Australia and ESPN)
Austalian openers Usman Khawaja and Nathan McSweeney required only 3.2 overs to score the required 19 runs to equalise the five Test match series 1-1 and complete the match inside three days. Highlight of the day-night fixture at Adelaide was a scintillating century by local boy Travis Head who completed his third century in as many matches,
The Adelaide crowd of 33,184 had more reasons to cheer about when their adopted son McSweeney creamed a brace of fours in the slim chase and then when their favourite son Head bagged the Player-of-the-Match award.
Reddy finished with 42 off 47 balls – it was the third time in four innings that he had top-scored for India in his maiden Test series. The hosts ended up facing only 81 overs across both innings, which contributed to the shortest pink-ball Test in Australia and also the shortest between the two teams.
Pat Cummins’ five-wicket haul capped Australia’s dominance in the pink-ball Test at the Adelaide Oval. The end was nigh for India when Mitchell Starc struck in the first over of the day with a perfectly pitched delivery to have Rishabh Pant nicking behind for his overnight score of 28. India folded for 175, a little over an hour into the first session. Needing 19, Usman Khawaja and Nathan McSweeney knocked off the runs within four overs before the first interval.
India were in danger of conceding an innings win when Cummins was banging one bouncer after another. R Ashwin, Harshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy all fell to short balls from the Australia captain. Much to the delight of the Adelaide crowd, their hero Travis Head pulled off a tumbling catch to dismiss No. 11 Mohammed Siraj, who had become public enemy No. 1 after giving Head a send-off on day two.
Adelaide was the fourth time in the last five Tests that they were unable to reach the 200-run mark. Adelaide’s 180 followed a series of 150 against Australia in Perth, 156 against New Zealand in Pune and 46 against New Zealand in Bengaluru.
“We were 30-40 runs short and it is always better to score more runs if you have to win in Australia,” said skipper Rohit Sharma in a post match conversation with the media. I feel you need to put runs on board for winning a Test match, he said.
True, there were opportunities when Australia were batting and we failed to take those chances [Travis Head was dropped on 78; he made 140]. And obviously when you miss those chances, it is never easy and it’s not going to be easy. The opposition will always make you pay for it and that’s what happened. And then in the second innings as well, we thought the conditions were better. Again, we were not good enough with the bat.
