The Indian cricket team on Saturday suffered the ignominy of being restricted to its lowest ever total in Test cricket, collapsing to 36/9 within the terminated second innings against Australia on the third morning of the primary Day/Night Test here.
India’s earlier lowest score was 42 at the Lord’s in 1974 against England, known in Indian cricket parlance as “Summer of 42”.
To make matters worse, star pacer Mohammed Shami’s series could rather be over thanks to a wrist injury from a brief ball from Pat Cummins, which could potentially be a fracture. Shami couldn’t continue and therefore the Indian innings was terminated at 36 for 9 in 21.2 overs.
After an honest 53-run first innings lead, India are now watching a humiliating defeat with only 89 runs to defend.
At one stage, India were reduced to 26 for 8 and seemed like equalling rock bottom ever Test score (26 by New Zealand) but Hanuma Vihari’s boundary helped them evade entry into the dark pages of cricketing history.
On the day, the Indian batting was completely exposed by the additional bounce generated by Australian pacers, who bowled every delivery on the off-middle channel after landing on the seam.
In an inexplicable collapse, India’s much vaunted batsmen fell like nine pins with not one one ready to reach double figures.
Once nightwatchman Jasprit Bumrah (2) was call at the primary over, the house pacers, led by Josh Hazlewood (5-3-8-5) and Pat Cummins (10.2-4-21-4), literally decimated the tourists and also caused lasting damage to their already bruised egos.
The likes of Mayank Agarwal (9), Cheteshwar Pujara (0) and Ajinkya Rahane (0) were all call at similar fashion.
All the deliveries were almost identical, angled in, which forced the batsmen to jab at them and just bounced a wee bit more. They deviated a shade taking outside edges to Tim Paine behind the stumps.