“Aaj-ka or pehle waala?” (Today’s or the previous one?) Rohit Sharma queried when a question was asked about Rishabh Pant’s shot in the final session on the final day that changed the game, even as India plunged to a 184-run defeat to Australia, bundled for 155 chasing 339 in the fourth innings at Melbourne.
Rohit would then talk about how Pant, who had pulled a short ball from the irregular spinner Travis Head down the throat of the long-on fielder, has to “understand what is required from him, more than anyone else telling him … what is the risk percentage? He has to figure that out. Do you want to let the opposition back into the game?”
Perfectly valid observations, only that two other people in the team need to ask those questions to themselves: Rohit himself and Virat Kohli. Three shots, three mental errors, turned the game around as India let slip a draw from their hands and allowed Australia to wrap a stunning win in front of a spellbound crowd that hung on every twist and turn. India could have headed to the next Test at Sydney, with a chance to win the series but they still have the chance to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy if they win the next game.
Travis Head gets Rishabh Pant and pulls out a unique celebration 👀#AUSvIND | #PlayOfTheDay | @nrmainsurance pic.twitter.com/EVvcmaiFv7
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) December 30, 2024
Pat Cummins would hail the win as the “best Test he has been part of” considering the record crowd of 373, 691 turned out for the game – the highest ever over five days of a Test in Australia exceeding the 350534 people who turned out for a Ashes Test against England in 1937 that was played over six days. And considering it seemed it was heading for a draw until the final session but Cummins and his men refused to fade away quietly. It was indeed a great win as his team wiped out the last 7 Indian wickets in 20.4 overs to silence a large Indian section of the crowd. The Australian fans grew increasingly raucous, orchestrated by a teenage debutant Sam Konstas who kept egging them on, and at the end, only Australians’s joyous screams hung in the MCG air.
India should regret not just Pant’s shot, but three of them. In the last over before lunch, Virat Kohli went chasing. At the start of the game, he had given an interview beside the pitch to Ravi Shastri, saying how he has been “indisciplined” in the series so far and that he plans to rectify that at MCG. “It’s a sad moment, but not a surprise,” was the pithy observation from Jim Maxwell, who has commented on the game for 51 years for ABC Radio, not long after Kohli fell.
Where do #RohitSharma and #ViratKohli‘s futures lie? @RaviShastriOfc shares his take! 🗣#AUSvINDOnStar 👉 4th Test, Day 5 LIVE NOW! | #ToughestRivalry #BorderGavaskarTrophy pic.twitter.com/nJoIhPIwQS
— Star Sports (@StarSportsIndia) December 30, 2024
It was the simplest of the bait – that well-outside off delivery and he went for a booming drive, nicking it behind. He put his head down in disappointment as he trudged off. In the previous game, when he had done the same, Rohit said he will let the “modern-day great alone” to sort it out but someone needs to sit down with him and understand what makes him chase those deliveries. Is it an urge to make a statement or in other words, ego? Many of his great Test knocks have actually come when he hasn’t let his ego come in the way. Is it then the context of possibly the last Test series in Australia that’s making him extend himself? Or is it the mental strain at the last lap of his Test career that has made him lose the ruthless discipline and mental discipline needed? And if so, is it re-gainable? Considering this wasn’t the first time in this series, let alone the recent past, Rohit’s query about Pant – ‘Aaj-ka ya pehle waala?’ – can hold for Kohli.
A short while earlier, the captain had combusted. For nearly 15 overs, he had stood firm, patting and tapping the ball around, not finding his past touch but at least looking more secure than he has had this series. The pitch was “flat” to quote Cummins, and it had to come from another mental error. After dead batting for an hour, he suddenly was sucked in by a real full ball from Cummins, going for an across-the-line flick from around the off stump. Instead, it flew to gully where Mitch Marsh held on to a real-sharp chance on rebound. Such has been his slump at what definitely seems to be the fag end of his career, that even this one-hour vigil had seemed promising. Such has been the slim pickings of late.
Still, India were far from out of the game. To put it brutally, two of their woefully out of form batsmen were the two of the three batsmen who had got out at that stage: Rohit and Kohli. The second session went by peacefully, the Indian flags kept waving, just outside the playing arena, in the concourse of MCG, the ice-cream van-cart was doing brisk business from the Indian fans, blissfully unaware about what was to unfold. The naive ones there even were talking about an implausible win which was not really in the picture but talks of Gabba 2021 and such floated around.
Then Cummins did what Cummins the Captain Fantastic does. He kept dangling the carrot of Travis Head at Rishabh Pant. Head has a natural ‘talent’ to bowl bad balls. R Ashwin has once talked about how when he was tired of being bashed around, he would deliberately bowl ‘bad balls’ at Virender Sehwag in the nets as he found that would get him the prized ‘wicket’. For Head, an irregular spinner, the ‘bad balls’ come naturally. And so one came, dropping short and tempting Pant into trying to pull it wide of long-on. But not everything was bad about that ball for it was outside off and Pant had to drag it from that angle, and unsurprisingly holed out to long-on. Two good balls followed from MCG’s cult hero the 35-year old Scott Boland, who discovered his aboriginal roots only in his mid-20s, to take out Ravindra Jadeja, and a pearler from the aging Nathan Lyon to knock down the young Nitish Reddy. Game over.
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