The Surrender at the SCG

An all to play for test match on a green mamba at the SCG that culminated with Australia regaining the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on the strength of a pair of sustained bowling performances.

Even before the test it was becoming increasingly clear that the team was struggling to get their act together. We had the head coach being combative in the pre-game press conference, and then a lot of speculation as to whether the designated captain would be playing. The uncertainty continued all the way to the toss before it was confirmed that Rohit was not playing - dropped or opted or stood down - nobody will ever know. And then came the rather surprising selection of two spinners in playing XI for a match that was to be played on a green top.

Then came the now familiar routine of our main batter struggling as we got bowled out for 185 in the first go around. It looked all lost when Bumrah left the ground for scans, but our other two seamers fought back and managed to get India a 4 run lead. After a riotous start to the second innings, our batters returned to their tried and test modes of failing as we had another batting collapse at the hands of Scotty Bowland who finished with ten wickets in the match. This meant Australia had a smallish 4th innings target and that became miniscule when Bumrah did not take the field for the fourth innings. And even the blind faithful were forced to concede after about 6 overs of terrible bowling from the other quicks, as the game became a cake-walk for Australia.

Questions

1. What is wrong with the Indian team management ? Should the house be cleaned ?
2. Is it the end of the road for Rohit and Virat in red ball cricket ?
3. Will England 2025 look like the tours of 2011, 2014 and 2018 ?

In this episode we talk largely about what happened at the SCG and in particular look at the causes for the struggles in this test and for that matter in the series.

Take a listen and let us know what you think.

#INDvsAUS #BGTSeries #CricketTalk #WTC25 #AllOutForNoLoss #BCCI #Bumrah #PatCummins #MCG #Bowland #Webster #SCG #Gambhir

Participants:

• Vasant Kumar
• Ramakrishnan G Iyer
• Anand Kumar Sankaran
• Vijaykumar Balasubramanian

Also available on Apple Podcast and Spotify.

https://all-out-for-no-loss.captivate.fm/episode/the-surrender-at-the-scg