A lot has been discussed and written about the batting and bowling of the touring Indian team as the Border-Gavaskar Trophy got underway in Adelaide. But poor fielding and dropping of catches has always been the Achilles heels for the Men in Blue in overseas tests.
On the day when the team needed all 11 players to stand up tall to challenge the Australian batting line up after an average team performance with the bat, the fielding efforts let the team down all over again.
Both Bumrah and Umesh Yadav, who was trusted to bowl with the new ball ahead of Mohammed Shami, were guilty of bowling too short and wide and did not force Australian openers to play a lot of deliveries.
The first instance of poor fielding effort came when Wriddhiman Saha dropped Marnus Labuschange when he dived to catch the ball that anyway would not have carried to Cheteshwar Pujara at the first slip off Mohammed Shami.
The matter went from bad to worse for the Indians as Japrit Bumrah misjudge a mistimed pull shot off Marnus Labuschagne and he jumped in fear of crossing the boundary in pursuit of that catch. Replays clearly showed that Bumrah had a lot of room to catch that ball comfortably but rather he misjudged the distance between him and the boundary rope to hand Labuschagne another life in the first Test.
If all those missed chances were not embarrassing enough for the tourists, Prithvi Shaw missed a sitter and let Labuschagne play on at the Adelaide Oval.
Twitter had a field day as fans and pundits flocked to the micro-blogging site and expressed their frustrations on those dropped catches while Prithvi Shaw and Jasprit Bumrah were also made fun of due to their poor fielding efforts.
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