Twitter reactions on Indian openers’ lean patch: Fans lash out at the Indian opening batsmen for their spree of poor performances.
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During the second day of the second Test of the ongoing India’s tour of Australia at Perth, Indian opening batsmen yet again failed to cope up against a fierce pace bowling attack comprising of Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.
After India bowled out Australia on 326 in 108.3 overs, they had to bat for three over before the lunch break. While everyone expected the Indian openers to survive for three overs, it didn’t happen as Murali Vijay (0) was bowled by Starc on the last delivery of the session.
In which was one more instance of Vijay playing a loose shot first up, he was seen playing a half-drive-half-defense against an incoming delivery from Starc. A significant gap between his bat and pad was enough for the ball to hit the stumps.
While Rahul survived the three overs before lunch, he couldn’t survive for another three after the break. On the first ball of the sixth over, Rahul seemed to have no answer whatsoever to a Josh Hazlewood swinging yorker. With the ball appearing to come in into the batsman and going away a tad at reaching him, it ended up hitting the stumps. Rahul ended up scoring 2 (17).
On a pitch which is doing a bit and is expected to only get worse for the batsmen, India needed a start in the affirmative up the order. With both the openers back in the pavilion in the sixth over, India’s chances of covering up Australia’s total look in a spot of bother.
In the 12 Test matches that Rahul has played in this year, he has scored 468 runs at an average of 23.40 and a strike rate of 59.31. Barring his century against England at The Oval, he has scored 321 runs in 21 innings (including today’s innings), something which is unacceptable for an opening batsman.
Vijay, who made his comeback into the team in the first Test, has registered scores of 11, 18 and 0 in the three innings which he has played down under. With one more innings remaining in the Test, both of them would be hoping to make a substantial mark. Another failure might see one of them swapping places with Prithvi Shaw in Melbourne.
Read some of the latest Twitter reactions on the same below:
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