It was a poor performance from the Indian side with the pink ball in the second day-night Test at the Adelaide Oval, as their bowling coach, Morne Morkel, the former pacer of the South Africa side, has admitted. Towards the end of the opening day, when the tourists came out to bowl, having bundled out for just 180 in their first innings, their line and length weren’t close to the stumps.
Morne Morkel felt that the bowler was a bit off the mark with the pink ball under the floodlights, compared to how comical the home Australian side was when they came out to bowl towards the end of the second day’s play.
“If I wind my clock to the first Test match, our lines and lengths were exceptional. It was sort of the blueprint for us going into this Test series. We wanted to bring the stumps into play as much as possible, and I thought last night, with the ball moving around a little bit, we missed that.” The former lanky fast bowler expressed at the press conference.
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At the start of the afternoon session, Australia lost their overnight opening batter, Nathan McSweeney, before watching the back of Steve Smith to find themselves 103/3, giving a brief momentum to the Rohit Sharma-led side.
Morne Morkel shoulders on quick learning for the progress of young pacers with the pink ball
But then Travis Head won the party with his aggressive approach as he nailed the bowlers around the park. However, the bowling coach was pleased with the improvement of the bowlers and displayed some comfort for the young pacers, especially Harshit Rana, who went for 86 runs in 16 overs without any reward.
“Today, I thought we got more balls in the right area consistently and in partnerships. We bowled better, but this is a young bowling group. Harshit is playing his second Test match, and it is going to be a big learning curve for him, playing for the first time in Australia. He is a guy who will learn a lot from today and get better.” Morne Morkel explained.
Marnus Labuschagne, who was out of form coming into the Test match with a string of low scores, displayed incredible patience for his 64-run knock in 126 balls, while Head drilled a fantastic 140-run knock at a strike rate of nearly 100.
The Indian bowling coach revealed that they would keep on backing the young pacers, who will keep on learning. He also vowed to put an arm on their shoulder to help them in the future.
“Like I said, Test cricket is a tough, tough place. There is nowhere to hide. He is playing his second Test match; he will learn from these conversations. The biggest thing for us, for me, is to put my arms around him. Playing in front of 50000 people, (it’s not easy). He is a player with a lot of potential. It’s for us to make him feel that we, as a team, back him, which we do.” Morne Morkel shed light on the presser.
Apart from Jasprit Bumrah, who finished 4/61 in 23 overs at an economy rate of around 2.7, hardly any other bowler showed any consistency with their line and length, as Mohammad Siraj was bashed for 98 runs in 24.3 overs along with his four wickets.
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This is India’s first pink ball game since their nightmarish 2020 game at the same ground when they were bundled out for 36 in the second innings. Morne Morkel claimed that the bowlers would learn with more of these opportunities.
“In terms of tempo, it’s still something that this team is learning for pink ball cricket because we haven’t played a lot of day-night Test matches. But it’s quick learning, as we are in a Test match now.” Morne Morkel concluded.