India vs Australia | Adelaide throws a classic that would be hard to forget

The Test could have passed as the beginning of a new Australian summer - one that gave them hope to establish a new culture and forget the tarnished. One that would revitalise a new 'Australian way' of playing cricket - not exactly the derivation of the success, supremacy, and intensity of the past Australian teams that had helped establish an awe of the in-your-face cricket that they had deployed over the years. The new Australian way hopes it wouldn’t be the eventual byproduct of what was seen as a geometrical progression of belligerence from Allan Border's team to Mark Taylor's team to reaching its pinnacle under Steve Waugh through verbal duels. Rather they hoped it would sign the dawn of a new era that Tim Paine and Justin Langer envision them to reach. Adelaide was going to be about that, a lot about that.

While most people were celebrating the century because top five were dismissed rather cheaply, only a select few were actually celebrating the guts of Pujara, the efforts that went behind the innings, and most importantly, how the guy from Saurashtra was battling the odds in a way that would make another particular Indian No. 3 of the yesteryear proud. Going into more detail, his battle against Nathan Lyon was a kind that purists would die to watch over and over again. 

The ball started gripping and turning in the very first innings itself and that made Pujara a bit sceptical about his feet movement. But once he was sure that it required nothing but pure application, he was more at home. He used his feet to negate the movement and played his occasional drives to get going. That century came along. The Indian batsmen got a masterclass on how to tackle Lyon and well, the Aussie spinner also got a clue that it would take more than just good bowling to mentally disintegrate the Indian No.3. 

In the second innings, Lyon had placed three men on the off-side, with a widish gap between cover and a fine mid-off so as to pierce Pujara’s defence when he would go for the attack. The rough patch had been created, but Pujara nullified that by padding out, forcing the Aussie to change his length, and sometimes line as well. Then, in the 70th over of the second innings, Lyon put Aaron Finch at forward short leg, forcing the Indian to bat inside the crease and in the 88th over, Pujara gave up. India lost their solid man. It was pretty much like a battle within a battle. A battle of wits, a battle of fierce Test cricket. The world, including the 11 fielders and the non-striker, was a mere bystander. 

Ravichandran Ashwin is not an unassuming cricketer like a Pujara is. He loves to do things that Pujara never thinks. He involves in Twitter banter, takes a dig at them who criticise his bowling performances, but what Ashwin never let go of was the strong zeal to perform better in Test cricket. He was criticised for not being able to take the benefits of the Southampton roughs, but in Adelaide, he didn't make the same mistakes again. As the old-fashioned spinners do, he kept on attacking the spots created by pacers’ footmark and was a threat for the Aussie left-handers on almost every delivery. It was the renaissance of a bowler whose failure in Australia on the previous tour had led to many experts writing him off. 

In some way or another, Ashwin also mirrors the changing fortunes of Indian cricket as well. In the previous tours of Australia, Indian batsmen called the shots and very rarely their bowlers got into the action. With the changing time, Indian bowlers have come on to outplay their Australian counterparts. Unfortunately for India, the batting which had come so good on their last trip here, couldn’t perform as per the expectations and threw away their wickets to give Australia a slender psychological advantage after the end of the former’s first innings. 

For India, THIS win would never be termed as their greatest ever in Australia because they have five more hard-earned victories to challenge this. But it will always be remembered as the point from where Virat Kohli’s boys seemed poised to usher in a new era and took the gold standard of Test cricket to another level. Cricket, as Ravi Shastri would say, was the real winner.