MELBOURNE: Before walking into the nets on the first day of Team India‘s practice session at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), Virat Kohli patiently applied tape on the bottom of his bat. The star batter ensured to have protection on his willow and few deliveries of his session were enough to understand why he did that.
Unlike the surfaces which we generally see during Tests Down Under, the practice pitches at the MCG had lower bounce and absolutely nothing in it for the quicks. Except the deliveries where the bowlers used the shoulder, not many rose above waist height and were comfortably dealt with off the front-foot.
It was clearly evident on the opening day and the trend continued on Sunday too. India’s quicks Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep were operating with the new ball for most of the session but there was very little help for the trio. Bumrah did slip in a few gems but they were mostly because of his use of angles and the subtle wrist work.
It was hard work for the bowlers under the harsh sun, which kept playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, and the nature of the surface was definitely not to the Indian camp’s liking.
Akash Deep did speak about it during his interaction with the media and felt it was on the flatter side, had variable bounce and was more suited for white-ball cricket. The variable bounce was on display as whenever side-armers put in the extra effort, some deliveries rose awkwardly from the good length spot and some kept a tad low.
So it wasn’t a surprise when the likes of KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Akash Deep took some blows to the body, and captain Rohit Sharma was in a lot of pain after one delivery hit the flap of his left pad and made a serious impact on his left knee.
Rohit had the ice pack on for close to 30 minutes but looked comfortable as he made his way back to the change room. Even when he was batting, he kept checking the toe of his bat after not hearing the ideal sound from the connection. The captain batted but finally decided to change the willow towards the fag end of his lengthy hit in the nets.
Australia are yet to get their training underway and will have their first session, an optional one, in the afternoon on Monday. The hosts, however, are highly unlikely to train on the same set of pitches as those were heavily watered after India’s session got over this afternoon.
There are more pitches in the training square which were covered throughout India’s sessions and when the covers did come off briefly today, they looked spicier than the ones which were given to the visitors.
The reveal of the other pitches will happen tomorrow (Monday) when Australia arrive at the MCG and it remains to be seen how the Indian camp reacts if they turn out to be as spicy as they looked.