Book extract: India blown away like the Windies

Adelaide Test 2020 Day 3 Thirtysix and all that 2020Thirtysix Or if you prefer 36 If yoursquore Virat Kohli yoursquod prefer neither If yoursquore the eye of cricket history you would have to blinkAustralia was once bowled out for 36 but that was on a wet wicket in 1902 Modern cricket teams pampered primped and prepared at enormous expense have no business being dismissed for what a club cricket team would be ashamed to rack up But there you have it never before has a Test team been dismissed with neither batsmen nor extras using only a second column in the scorecardVirat Kohlirsquos first innings had been the matchrsquos most distinguished but the India captainrsquos fortunes mdash and that of the teamrsquos mdash changed on the third day when he was out for fourSo the worldrsquos foremost cricket personality will depart Australia next week a gracious loser but a heavy one And he will leave his team trailing 01 in the series for the BorderGavaskar Trophy after a match dominated by the bowlers and shaped by the pitch From the point Kohli fell in fact the result was more or less foreordainedAs Kohli faced Patrick Cummins this afternoon India was 72 ahead cornered but still competing Kohlirsquos first innings had been the matchrsquos most distinguished again he looked earnest and unflustered he had guided a soothing boundary to third man hope still sprang eternalBut Australia have long fancied Kohli on a sixth stump line jabbing square And again such a delivery drew Indiarsquos captain in Cameron Green taking a fumbling catch from a flying edge at gully Cummins clocking up a 150th Test wicketThe thorough trouncing hurt in more ways than one Hanuma Vihari lays on the ground after being struck on the shoulder by a ball on the third day of the matchKohli loitered while the replay was checked as if reluctant took his leave he turned when it was confirmed taking his teamrsquos chance with him Within seven overs India had been bundled out for their lowest total in Test cricket twentyone overs later Australia had concluded an eightwicket victory Kohli said afterwards he was lsquostruggling for wordsrsquo to describe the experience those whose job it was to find them felt somewhat similarThis was the slowest scoring Test in Australia this millennium batsmen eking out barely 25 runs an over but also among the fastest moving ending in barely half the allotted time The bowling was fast though not furious on the contrary it today attained a precision that could only be called clinical A television graphic of where the ball passed through the batting crease during Indiarsquos second innings revealed a tight crescent like the bullet holes a firing squad might leaveThese days in Test cricket everything is measured producing columns of figures clouds of data It could be condensed here to 068 degrees the average seam deviation in Indiarsquos second innings It does not sound much representing about a quarter of a batrsquos width but at the sort of speeds Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood achieve it is enough to shoot rays through a batting lineupTeam India walks off the field after the loss Kohli had said afterwards that he was lsquostruggling for wordsrsquo to describe the experienceIt rather vindicated Tim Painersquos intuition of granting Cummins the new pink ball in the second innings seam rather than swing having menaced the batsmenrsquos edges and stumps throughout the match It brought Prithvi Shawrsquos wicket in the dark on Friday night but we hadnrsquot seen anything yetIn theory day 3 should offer the best batting conditions of a Test the pitchrsquos early life having drained away deterioration yet to have set in It usually features bowlers applying themselves patiently and frugally to prising their opponents outAdelaide moreover has a reputation for sunsoaked runsoaked Test matches When these countries met here in 2003 Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid traded double hundreds and thirtysix wickets fell for 1506 runs in 2014 there were six individual centuries amid thirtytwo wickets for 1566 runsFrom the outset however this Adelaide Oval pitch has belied all our understanding of dropin pitches offering encouragement sideways and upwards to which batsmen out of practice against red balls let alone pink were unequal What unfolded was a demolition although less like the action of a wrecking ball on a building than the implosion of a smokestacksudden total selffeeding pacegatheringCummins knocked out the keystone in the dayrsquos fifth over angling a delivery that Cheteshwar Pujara was good enough to nick as it nipped away Indiarsquos hardwon firstinnings advantage no longer looked quite so commandingHazlewood from the River End then hit a line that demanded a stroke and a length that made this perilous nicking off Mayank Agarwal and Ajinkya Rahane in a double wicket maiden The big screenrsquos tracing of it had an onomatopoeic character WOOOWOIndiarsquos tail again sold itself cheaply Ashwin providing Hazlewood with his 200th Test wicket Hanuma Vihari providing his eighth fivefor The thwack of the ball into Painersquos gloves was audible the collective wince when Cummins struck Mohammad Shamirsquos arm palpable The last did not take the field when India came out to defend 90 of which Australia made short workJoe Burns last man picked for this Test after a ruinous run of outs took fifteen balls and twentyseven minutes to edge a boundary to third man Umesh Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah then offered generous long hops each pulled eagerly for fourLater like a captive slipping his bonds he used his feet to drive Ashwin in the V along the ground and in the air As if in celebration he finished the match with a topedged hook that bounced out of long legrsquos hands for six bringing up his first Test halfcentury in more than a year For him a new beginning for Indiarsquos captain an uncomfortable pause With fond memories of Test feats there Brian Lara called his firstborn child Sydney whatever can be predicted of the imminent Kohli offspring it will not be named AdelaideExcerpted with permission from Indian Summers by Gideon Haigh published by Westland Books