The India A side suffered a horror collapse on Thursday, the opening day of the second unofficial Test against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
After putting the India A side into bat, Australia Test seamers Michael Neser and Scott Boland skimmed through the top-order within 16 balls. KL Rahul, dropped from India’s second and third Tests at New Zealand recently, joined the India A squad earlier this week for some game time.
While Rahul was listed for a middle-order spot, captain Rohit Sharma’s potential absence in the first Border Gavaskar Trophy Test in Perth meant the Karnataka batter was moved up to the opening spot, ahead of India A captain Ruturaj Gaikwad.
Rahul fell for four off as many deliveries after he was lured into a forward push by Boland, who extracted outside-edge to the wicket-keeper. Boland had earlier marked Rahul as one of the targetted Indian batters for the summer. “I was lucky to bowl to him in a Test over in India a couple of years ago but it’ll be nice to play against him in our backyard. He’s a world-class player but someone I think we can get on top of pretty early and hopefully stay on top of him for most of the summer,” Boland was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo ahead of the game.
Contending with Rahul for an opening spot in the Perth Test is Abhimanyu Easwaran, who fell for a three-ball duck in the opening over to Neser. Neser was in line for a first-over hat-trick when he bumped out Sai Sudharsan first ball and nearly clipped Ruturaj Gaikwad off the next delivery.
Jurel cracks fifty
Though Devdutt Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel batted India to Lunch, the former fell early in the second sesson as Neser bagged his fourth wicket. Only Wicket-keeper Jurel, who replaced Ishan Kishan in the XI, stood tall against the probing seam and bounce from the Australia A quicks.
India were reduced to 103 for seven before Jurel brought up his half-century off 118 deliveries with a six in his maiden First Class innings in Australia.
