Rohit Sharma has erred with his calls numerous times, and Australia have gone too ahead in the game now.
Rohit Sharma’s captaincy came to the limelight again on the second day of the Adelaide Test when Australia were running away with the game. His tactics were questionable, even to the point of being baffling, particularly with his bowling changes and field placements.
Not catering to the line of attack of the bowlers with right field placements was a glaring error on day twp of the Test: Most times, there was no one at short midwicket when the lines were straighter, allowing Aussie batters to play in that area. The phase was still early in the day, and the captain could have provided that extra protection by keeping a fielder close to the catching position.
Later, the field was spread immediately for Travis Head and other batters, allowing them to take easy singles. Sure, Head is an aggressive batter and can play big shots, but he has a weakness on the deliveries outside the off-stump line early in the innings since his feet don’t move much.
That’s where Rohit could have been more attacking and put more close-in fielders to pile more pressure on the new batter. Remember when Marnus Labuschagne had just got out, and Mitchell Marsh was new to the crease?
Marsh can often struggle vs spin, especially early in the innings, and Ashwin was into the attack. However, Rohit put fielders at boundaries on midwicket and long-on to allow Marsh to take easy singles and settle him.
Then he removed the first slip and went slightly wider towards the second slip, leaving the area vacant completely. To exacerbate the case, Travis Head nicked one straight to the first slip, and no one was there to take the catch, with another chance went down begging.
Even for a new batter Alex Carey, Rohit had a long-off back, which allowed him to take easy singles and get off the blocks early in the innings. All this happened in between as Australia took calculative risks to get boundaries and combined them with singles and doubles to weave the innings.
Going over to the bowling changes, Bumrah only bowled four overs in the first spell and didn’t return for the second spell in the first session. Earlier on the first day, he had delayed Ravichandran Ashwin’s entry and brought him quite late into the attack.
Ashwin’s success during the last Day-Night Test came when the ball was slightly new, and Rohit could have tried a quick spell under the lights yesterday. Instead, Rohit brought him in the 32nd over and gave only one when the lights were on.
Nitish Kumar Reddy brought a wicket out of nowhere in his second over of a fresh spell, dismissing Marnus Labuschagne. Rohit didn’t give him another over and changed him immediately.
Maybe he wanted to attack, but that should have been done with aggressive fields. Reddy surely deserves more bowling exposure since the pink ball moves relatively more, and he can swing the ball.
But Reddy only bowled six overs, while the main pacers did the heavy lifting. There were certain patches when he could have been used for a quick spell.
During the second session, Rohit kept bowling Harshit Rana despite him conceding too many runs and boundaries almost every over. He was given an extended spell despite not getting the desired results when India could have brought Mohammed Siraj, who has bowled well in this game.
His tactics were not proactive when India were fielding, which has been a common trend. He has erred with his calls numerous times, and Australia have gone too ahead in the game now for India to possibly stage a strong fightback.
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