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The much-awaited pink-ball Test of the highly-anticipated five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test series is underway at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide. While the Men in Blue enter the second Test after taking a 1-0 lead in Perth with a dominating 295-run victory over the hosts, Pat Cummins-led Australia will aim to comeback to continue their dominance in pink-ball Test, a glimpse of which was seen on the opening day on Friday, December 6.
While the hosts came with a forced change with Scott Boland replacing injured Josh Hazlewood, Team India called for three changes, two being the obivious ones with Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill both available. The third change came as veteran R Ashwin replaced Washington Sundar.
Why R Ashwin replaced Sundar in India XI for Adelaide Test? Ryan ten Doeschate explains
Speaking after the completion of Day 1 of the Adelaide Test, Team India Fielding Coach clarified the rationale behind this move. According to Doeschate, the decision came seeing Ashwin’s remarkable track record at the Adelaide Oval and India’s need for batting depth. “Since he came to the fold, sort halfway through that New Zealand series, he hasn’t put a foot wrong. I guess going into the last Test, we wanted to strengthen the batting and given what we saw of Nitish in the first Test, we kind of thought we could go with what we perceived to be the guys bowling the best spin at the moment, and we feel Ash (Ashwin) is more likely to get wickets on these conditions,” Ryan ten Doeschate said at the post-day media conference.
“When you get the confidence of Nitish batting at seven, it doesn’t really matter with Ash batting at eight, and that was the thinking. There is not much to choose between them, and we just thought that Ash would be slightly more effective on this wicket,” he further added.
Speaking of Ashwin’s performance with the bat, he scored crucial 22 runs off 22 deliveries to help India cross the 150-run mark and built a crucial partnership with Nitish Kumar Reddy, who was the top-scorer for the side (42). However, the veteran Indian spinner bowled a maiden over on the brink of Day 1, he conceded seven runs of his first over on Day 2 of the pink-ball Test.
