Border Gavaskar Trophy: India’s top-order batters need to fire at the Gabba
The HinduWedged between high-rises, a massive hospital, busy roads lined with flame of the forest and frangipani trees, supermarkets and old-world cafes, the Gabba seems an oasis of calm. The spice quotient, though, has been enhanced following the incident involving Mohammed Siraj and centurion Travis Head at Adelaide while rival skippers Rohit Sharma and Pat Cummins have gone easy on the rhetoric, being the antacids to quell heartburn. The bigger picture of a spot in the ICC World Test Championship final still remains, but more importantly Rohit’s men have to emulate what previous units led by Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane respectively did on the 2018-19 and 2020-21 tours. Rahul, Devdutt Padikkal, Rishabh Pant, Dhruv Jurel, R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Harshit Rana, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep and Prasidh Krishna. Australia: Pat Cummins, Usman Khwaja, Nathan McSweeney, Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey, Josh Inglis, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Scott Boland, Nathan Lyon, Beau Webster, Sean Abbott and Brendan Dogget.