The history books have been written: Australia have won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 by 3-1 margin. In the process they ended their decade-long drought of the BGT and shut India’s ambition of completing a hat-trick of wins Down Under. Icing on the cake? Spot in the World Test Championship final against South Africa.
There was a lot that India didn’t do right. Over-reliance on Jasprit Bumrah was one. The bowling looked clueless, again, to counter Travis Head. Catches were let go by the heaps. Crucial moments, those small phases in play, were not capitalised. But above all, India’s batting failing to fire, again, didn’t make things easy.
There were individual sparks provided by Yashasvi Jaiswal (391 runs in the series) and Nitish Kumar Reddy (298) – both on their maiden tours of Australia. But, on the whole, there was no consistency whatsoever.
One can’t even argue that the batting struggles became apparent in Australia. Signs were there at home. Against New Zealand, India were dismal on a gloomy Bengaluru track and were equally woeful to the spin of Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel. Things just exacerbated in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Here’s a quick recap of India’s batting in the five matches: 150, 487, 180, 175, 260, 369, 155, 185 and 157. In six of 9 innings, India failed to go past 200-run mark. On an average, India scored 235 runs on this tour as compared to Australia’s 271.
Sachin Banthia, a TimesofIndia.com reader and X (formerly Twitter) user, pointed out that India had nine 50-plus individual scores on the tour (three by Jaiswal, two by KL Rahul, one each by Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja). To put things into context, during the series triumphs in 2018-19 and 2020-21, India had 13 fifty-plus scores from fewer innings.
No one encapsulates the dire batting display more than the two veterans Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. Rohit produced just 31 runs from five innings that it took Jasprit Bumrah’s 22 in Sydney for the highest score by an Indian captain in the series. Rightly, Rohit was dropped for the fifth Test.
Kohli, once a flag-bearer on foreigns tours, including Australia, had more of an internal battle with himself than with the bowlers. They threw in deliveries outside off, on the fifth-sixth stump line, and Kohli took bait. Each. And. Every. Time. End result? 190 runs at an average of 23.75 runs. Remove the century from Perth and the situation gets grimmer still: 90 runs from 8 innings; an average of 11.25. For the record, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Akash Deep all have better averages than that.
The tale wasn’t made happier by the youngsters either. Shubman Gill (93) and Rishabh Pant (255) both had challenges of their own. KL Rahul, considered a liability at the start of BGT, scored 276 runs despite having his role in the order changed to accomodate Rohit.
After the disappointing batting performances in the series, head coach Gautam Gambhir sent a strong message, urging them to feature in domestic cricket.
“I would always like everyone to play domestic cricket. That is how much importance domestic cricket needs to be given. Not only one game, if they are available and if they have the commitment to play red-ball cricket, everyone should play domestic cricket. If you don’t give importance to domestic cricket, then you will never get the desired Test players,” Gambhir said in the press conference.
And yet players who have done well in the domestic circuit – Abhimanyu Easwaran and Sarfaraz Khan – didn’t get a single game in Australia.
While it is, rightly, said that you need to take 20 wickets to win Test matches. But you can’t win them when you’re not even putting 200 on the board either. And, for the record, Australia were bowled out seven out of nine times across the series.
