Visitors aim to repeat 2021 Brisbane heroics through Rohit Sharma-led India’s quest for winning return against Oz in third Test starting tomorrow
KL Rahul fields as India players look on at The Gabba, Brisbane, yesterday. Pic/Getty Images
An overwhelming majority of the 66 Tests at the Gabba have traditionally been played before Christmas. Two of the last four Tests here have been staged in mid-January and Australia have lost both — to India in 2021 and West Indies this year — so it was no surprise that the Aussie players pushed for a return to the pre-Christmas window.
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Australia have lost just seven of 61 matches played before Santa comes bearing gifts, and three of five played after the Christmas period. The skew can be attributed to pitches later in the season losing some of their bite and therefore not providing Australia’s tall quicks the same assistance in regard to pace and bounce.
Now that the Gabba Test is back in its original avatar, the expectation is that there will be lift and pace off the track, though the surface itself looked a little less green on Thursday than it did 24 hours previously. Curator David Sandurski has promised a ‘typical Gabba pitch with traditional life and bounce’ though no one is sure any longer what constitutes a typical Gabba pitch.
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As he made his first foray into the Gabba in nearly four years, Rishabh Pant would have been flooded by nostalgia. It was here that, in January 2021, he applied the finishing touches to what is inarguably India’s greatest overseas triumph, perhaps the greatest ever success in their storied cricketing journey. Losing established players on an almost daily basis as the long tour played under the giant shadow of the Coronavirus entered the Test phase and moved from Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney and then Brisbane, India were left with less than half the original XI that started the Adelaide defeat.
Injury prone squad
Missing were Virat Kohli (paternity leave) and the injured bunch of Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Hanuma Vihari, R Ashwin and Jasprit Bumrah. The batting was still in reasonably accomplished hands — stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane, immovable object Cheteshwar Pujara and Rohit Sharma among them — but the bowling attack was stretched to the thin. Mohammed Siraj was the leader of the attack, but he was only two Tests young. Navdeep Saini and Shardul Thakur had played one match each, T Natarajan and Washington Sundar were making their debut.
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And yet, India fought. Toe to toe. Down one minute, but back on their feet and throwing punch after deadly punch the next. Australia always had their noses in front but Siraj’s maiden five-wicket haul left India needing 328 to inflict on Australia their first defeat at the Gabbatoir since 1988.
Gill, an unsung hero
It’s a shame that Shubman Gill’s 91 isn’t spoken of in the same breath at Pujara’s knock-a-minute 56 and the piece de resistance, Pant’s unbeaten 89 punctuated by the off-drive Josh Hazlewood that brought up India’s three-wicket victory to scenes of great jubilation and unalloyed ecstasy. From 36 all out in the first Test and from the depth of injury-riddled despair to the highest of highs, what a story.
Like a film running on a loop, that knock must have run through Pant’s mind on Thursday as he reunited with the Gabba. He has had a quiet time of it so far — just 87 runs in four innings — but hey, what better setting than the Gabba to turn it on?
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