The Indian team under the leadership of Ajinkya Rahane has attained a firm control over the second tour match against the Australia A team after a collective team performance with the bat on the second day.
The visitors started their second innings at the start of the day and allowed the pair of Shubman Gill and Prithvi Shaw to stake a claim for the opener's slot created by Rohit Sharma’s absence. But Shaw failed to seize the opportunity and was dismissed early. The next man in, Shubman Gill, was up to the task and made most of the opportunity to push for a place at the top of the order.
Gill batted with supreme confidence and found immaculate timing. His placement was delicate in an innings of 65 from 78 balls where he hit 10 crisp boundaries.
On the other hand, Mayank Agarwal, who is one of the certain starters for the Adelaide Test, was patient enough to wait for loose deliveries before he could go for big runs. He showed restraint to see out more than 120 balls for his 61 runs that included only four boundaries and two sixes. He was admirably cautious against pacers but the leg-spin of Mitchell Swepson was too inaccurate to trouble him and he enjoyed it to the fullest. Agarwal made a good display of his technique against spin bowling.
The batting of Hanuma Vihari, who has made a name for himself in the Indian Test team on the back of his attritional batting and bowling the team out of trouble, was a point of contention for the visitors after he had failed to make any big runs in the three innings preceding the one on the second day of the second tour game.
Vihari started positively against the full tosses of Swepson but quickly settled into his rhythm and showed resistance against tight bowling from the Australia A bowlers. Like Agarwal, he too was severe against Swepson’s loose deliveries but against pacers, he was willing to wait for the deliveries to pitch in his arc, and whenever bowlers erred by bowling too full to him, he obliged to drive them for boundaries.
Another concern for the visitors was the batting of Rishabh Pant and there is a toss-up between him and Wriddhiman Saha as to who will don the gloves in Adelaide.
Pant was given the perfect opportunity to launch his attack, in a role the Indian team would love him to play whenever they will be in an ascending position going ahead in the main series. Pant looked at his usual best and in the last over of the day, he needed 22 runs to complete his century, which he did in a signatory emphatic style, hitting Jack Wildermuth to all parts of the ground.
Earlier, on day one, it were India’s bowlers who made early inroads. Joe Burns' poor form continued while the left-handed Marcus Harris, who has been added to the Test squad to face the touring Indians in Adelaide, too failed to have an impressive outing against the menacing duo of Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami.
The two of them bowled like a champion pair and restricted the hosts by not giving any easy deliveries barring a few later in their spells. Shami made good use of the round-the-wicket angle and troubled the left-handers.
Other pairs of pacers in Navdeep Saini and Mohammad Siraj looked sharp and mopped up the tail after the rout of middle-order by Shami and Bumrah.
Before that, the Australia A bowlers had posed massive challenges to the Indian batting line up as the tourists resurrected only on the back of a stupendous last-wicket partnership between Siraj and Bumrah, who scored his maiden first-class fifty.
The visitors had a lot of boxes to tick before the game began and ended up ticking all of them at the end of play on day two. The conundrum of Gill or Shaw will be more or less settled with Gill scoring runs and showing signs of being in great form and same is the case in the Pant and Saha debate. Pant has again proven what he can bring to the table for the visitors. But the final call on selection is presumably, yet to be made.
Gill’s runs would keep him in the reckoning, especially, from the second Test onwards when Virat Kohli returns home for his paternity leave.
Additionally, good news has emerged for the Indian team with Rohit Sharma regaining full fitness and preparing to take the flight to Australia on December 13. He is, though, unlikely to join the squad before the conclusion of the second Test on December 30 in Melbourne.
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