The opportunity for India to consolidate on the high of winning the Perth Test by 295 runs was squandered away through a ten-wicket defeat in the pink-ball Test in Adelaide. At Adelaide Oval, the Australian bowlers kept their deliveries much fuller than the Indian bowling attack on the first two days of the game, which set the platform for them to win by ten wickets and level the five-match series 1-1. According to Jatin Paranjape, the former India cricketer and national selector, India’s failure to bowl fuller deliveries, in contrast to Australia’s approach, cost them the match. “I thought we didn’t bowl as well as we did in Perth. I thought the Australians kind of bowled much better than what the Indian team bowled. I thought Bumrah also was a little bit off-colour.”

“I don’t think they pitched the ball as further up to the batters than they should have. So this is the big reason why Australia went on to get a 150-run lead. The wicket in Adelaide helped the bowlers a lot, and not bowling well there was like a big miss for India,” said Paranjape to IANS in an exclusive conversation.

India’s bowlers also failed to exploit Travis Head’s weakness against short ball, which led to the left-handed batter making a brilliant 140. Paranjape, the co-founder of KheloMore and a member of the BCCI Cricket Advisory Committee, believes India’s bowling strategy against Head in the remaining three matches will be the most critical factor in determining the series outcome.

“Travis Head is somebody who goes about his batting as per his will and his technique is extremely different, which makes him a very dangerous player. Like, he scored 140 runs in 141 balls on such a challenging pitch. So if he gets off to a start, India will have to have some kind of watertight strategy to bowl to him. Otherwise, the series would very quickly run away from us.”

Another key factor in India’s loss in Adelaide was their much-reduced batting time of 81 overs across both innings, significantly less than the 183.7 overs in their Perth win. Paranjape wants Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, and KL Rahul to bat for a longer time in the rest of the series.

“Definitely, we need to bat longer. I thought Shubman Gill was destined for a good knock in the second innings before a beauty from Starc got him. Jaiswal, Gill and KL Rahul, who is obviously not a youngster anymore, will have to graduate into senior players on this tour by scoring big hundreds. Like Jaiswal did it in the first Test match, so we need one out of these three to fire away and score a couple of hundreds in the next three Test matches – it’s as simple as that.”

Amidst all the gloom, all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy has been a bright spot with the bat in the lower order, top-scoring in three of India’s batting innings with 41, 42 and 42. “I was super impressed with the way he played in the two Tests. Definitely, he has the potential to go big.”

“Like he’s going and playing his game in Australia and against the best bowling attack in the world. So I think the future is really bright. In future, he can be a really serious kind of alternative to Hardik Pandya,” added Paranjape.

He concluded by noting the ten-day break between the first and second Tests broke India’s momentum. During those ten days, rain reduced India’s two-day pink-ball practice game against the Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra to a limited-overs contest.

“That 10-day break did not help the Indian team. Like, you win one Test match and you would want for the second Test match to be pretty quickly coming up. That 10-day break has kind of mellowed the team down in terms of its preparation.”

“Again it was a pink ball Test match, which the team is not much used to playing. With the next Test match coming pretty quickly on the 14th, we need to regroup – it’s as simple as that.”