Pujara criticises Indian bowlers on Day/Night Test Strategy.

During the TV broadcast on an Indian Channel, Pujara jibed Indian bowlers for not targeting Travis Head enough with short pitch deliveries. As per Pujara, Travis had struggled against the short ball in the past, and during the whole 140 runs inning of the Head, Indian pacers bowled only three short deliveries. He also added that the bowler gave him too much room outside the off stump, his favourite area to hit shots, which helped him score a massive century. Due to this, Australia took a big lead in the pink wall test and thus took the match away from India.

 

“Head's weakness is short-pitched deliveries, which is well known to the opposition,” he told on JioStar; he added, “but we only saw three short deliveries during the head's inning,

“He dominates the offside, then the team could have restrained his offside stroke-making, and instead of going with a 6-3 (offside-onside), they could have a 5-4 field placement; that would have been a good plot against Head.”

 

For context, in the second test match of the Border Gavaskar Trophy, India suffered a shameful defeat by ten wickets, losing the second Pink Ball test at Adelaide in a row. In the first innings, India scored just 180 runs, with an exceptional performance from Mitchell Starc, who took six wickets in the innings. When Australia came to bat, they scored 337 runs, including 140 from Travis Head, who destroyed the Indian bowling.

In the third inning, India again got out under 200 runs, scoring just 175 runs, setting a tiny target of just 19 runs for Australia, which they accomplished in just a few overs and won the test match.

Travis Head later became the Man of the Match. Nitish Reddy tried to resist with 42 runs in both innings, but he didn't get support from other batters; his score was the highest by any Indian batter in both innings.

 

Pujara later discussed the dismissal of Indian batters, stressing that they got out because of their inexperience with Pink ball, 

“The batters played too late, with most of them getting out because of their inexperience with the pink ball.

They should have discussed in the team meeting when to score runs and when to play defensively. ”

 

He also discussed Subhuman Gill's dismissal, how the ball came fast, and most balls were outswing while the ball in which he was dismissed was inswing.

 

India and Australia will play the next test match on December 14 at The Gabba, Brisbane. The last time India played here, it was a historic win, as India defeated Australia.