How boring old school cricket won first Test series win for India in Australia

[jnaveen1980]

I don't disagree that, main architects of Test wins are the bowlers. But there are times when batsmen are more influential in test series win. Pujara in this series is a great example. Prior to series it was well known batting of Australia was iffy. But they backed their world class bowlers who could keep creating chances against the dodgy one-man dependent Indian side. On the contrary Indian bowlers carried a few niggles with notorious injury history. The way he blunted the attack not only helped him but also helped all the batsmen and also provided enough rest to bowlers. It generated a cascading effect which made Aussie bowlers less and less potent as the series went on. If India had dropped Pujara for the first test like they did in England, scoreline would have been completely different. Yes he is boring. But his boring cricket is the reason why India won the series. It is very rare to see such dogged cricket. Alistair cook when in full form used to do that. Faf Du plessis has done that a few times. Sai Hope did in England.

 

[The Viper]

Pujara really was clutch in this series. He was impregnable. Aus bowlers really stood no chance against him. Kohli was good as well but Pujara was the difference maker especially in the first test.

 

[giri26]

India realised that playing like that in those pitches is the only way to win. These pitches were not like the ones in 2014/15 where it was a run fest and scoring rates were pretty high. These were sluggish pitches where shot making was not easy. Indian batters especially Pujara and Kohli had lots of patience to grind out some precious runs which the Aussie batters lacked.

 

[KingKhanWC]

They did risk it going slowly at 2.5 rpo as in modern test cricket it's too slow to win the match, take 20 wickets on decent surfaces but I guess Aus batsmen were never seen as a big threat.

Pujara played as he should, his strength is to bat and bat , tiring the bowlers and giving no chances. His peformace in this series was nothing short of magnificent.

 

[Nikhil_cric]

It's because of the pitches. Australian pitches have been less and less conducive to fast scoring and have been progressively slower each season since 2014.

 

[Markhor]

Indeed, and yet people claim Pakistan's Test batting woes are due to poor SRs when we can't even take matches into the fifth day.