Australia declared overnight twice in this Test and set India 364 to win in 98 overs on Day 5. They won by 48 runs. A few things contributed to this result. A few things will be said about this result which I think are not true.
1. The idea that India "went for the runs" on the last day.
2. The idea that India "kept going for the runs" even after losing two wickets in the same over to Nathan Lyon.
3. That India play spin poorly.
In real time, some of the shots played by India's batsmen suggested to me that they were indeed going for the win. But on reflection, a two things stand out about this game.
1. The pace of scoring throughout the match. Australia made 354/6 in 89.2 overs at the end of Day 1, or 3.94 runs per over. Their run rate in their first innings would end up 4.31 runs per over. They made 517/7 in 120 overs by the end of Day 2. In response, India made 369/5 by the end of Day 3 in just 97 overs. 3.8 runs per over. India first innings run rate at the end of their innings (444 all out in 116.4 overs) would be 3.8. Australia made 290/5 in 69 overs in their 2nd innings. The run rate over the first 3 innings of the match, was 4.09 runs per over. This suggests a fast scoring ground. Whats more, it suggests a pitch on which timing strokes came easily to most batsmen. 9 players reached 50.
2. The wicket played well. India's tactic of bowling round the wicket to the Australian left handers and Mitchell Johnson bowling left arm over, created the perfect rough outside the right hander's off stump for Australia's classical orthodox off spinner to exploit.
And exploit it he did. India played Lyon in the classic fashion. India have used the same tactic against spinners in overseas Tests for as long as I can remember. Tendulkar and Laxman taking on Brad Hodge, Shane Warne, Nathan Hauritz, Daniel Vettori, Graeme Swann and several others. But Lyon held his nerve and kept plugging away into that rough. He got to bowl into it on Day 3 and Day 5, into a breeze which was at times stiff. Lyon's classical action brought him crucial over-spin and got the ball to misbehave out of that rough. Perhaps most crucially, the rough spots were beyond the reach of most batsmen and couldn't be covered with ease.
Lyon was exceptionally persistent. Over 70 overs and 1 ball, he went for 27 fours and 6 sixes. He conceded a boundary on average every other over. He gave up 286 runs in the match. He was Australia's major wicket taking threat in this Test. Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris had to be watched carefully, but they could be played. It was a peculiar game in that sense. It is rare for a bowler to be both his team's main wicket taking option, and the opposition's main target for runs. Its a position a lead spinner should relish.
Australia set India 363 in 98 overs on the final day. The drop-in pitch played well apart from the rough. The middle of the pitch was not cracked. But the run rate Australia set India was lower than the run rate in the match over the first three innings.
Still, India's approach would have been fairly standard in such situation. Try and keep wickets in hand until Tea time and then chase runs afterwards. Without Dhoni or Ashwin, India's batting from number 7 onwards remained suspect due to inexperience.
And it showed. India were in the hunt at Tea time because of one man. Virat Kohli. Murali Vijay played the anchor man to perfection. At Tea he had 85 in 208 balls. At the other end, Virat Kohli has 82 in 112 balls. Had Kohli scored at the usual strike rate of somcwhere between 45 and 55 runs per hundred balls, India would have been 25 runs less than they were at Tea.
Like Ricky Ponting, Virat Kohli seems incapable of scoring slowly unless he deliberately tries to do so. His slowest Test hundred was 103 in 295 balls at Nagpur on a soporific pitch on which getting the ball of the square was a challenge and getting batsmen out was nearly impossible. Each of his other 7 Test hundreds came off less than 200 balls. Kohli has too many stroke all round the wicket. What's more, teams have not yet resorted to trying to bore him out. They're still willing to attack him.
Australia didn't have a choice today. They had to attack both Kohli and Vijay. They knew that with the rough being as lethal as it was, one wicket would bring a brand new batsman to face the rough (all but Karn Sharma being right handers) from Lyon's end, and skilfull reverse swing (Siddle and Harris both reversed the ball both ways) from the other end. The reverse swing could be played, but needed to be watched.
It wasn't easy going for Vijay or Kohli. Between them they could have been out LBW about 7 times during the day. Umpire Erasmus was unwilling to give LBWs which were marginal on height. With the ball jumping out of the rough, it was hard to blame him for such caution. But the odd ball kept low as well and on one occasion, the batsman survived a shooter due to sheer good fortune - the impact was about an inch outside off. On another day, another Umpire might have given any one or more of those appeals, and the batsmen would have had little to complain about.
Australia did get lucky against Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane. But the rest of the batsmen were playing a losing battle against the conditions, especially after Tea. Vijay got himself into a jam as he approached a century and misjudged the length of a delivery from Nathan Lyon which was flatter, on a straight line and turned less than his usual offering. Vijay was plumb LBW.
Both Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma struggled with the rough. Both play the sweep shot. Played from outside off stump, it is a safe shot as the batsman can cover the line and be assured that the impact would be outside off stump should he miss. Both play the shot hitting down on the ball. In the first innings, Rahane played the sweep early and often. Today, Rohit Sharma was out off the glove at leg gully. Rahane was out bat-pad, though replays showed the ball missed bat and glove on the way to pad. Its not for nothing that they often say that its hard for a new batsman when there is a rough and a spinner is exploiting it. India's spinners know this better than most.
It remains one of the game's greatest contemporary mysteries as to why the Umpire in the TV room can't overrule the Umpire on the field if he sees something clearly wrong. But such is the rule.
Wriddhiman Saha came to the wicket, and perhaps, having seen what happened to Rahane and Rohit Sharma, decided that the only way to play Lyon was to try and hit him out of the attack. He got a four and a six, but then took one chance too many. His wicket was an illustration of just how much of a risk it is to run down the wicket to a spinner, especially that early in one's innings, when the ball is turning.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the chase was that at Tea on Day 5, India needed to score at only 4.3 runs per over, in a match in which scoring at 4 was normal.
Virat Kohli was the supreme batsman in the match. Yes David Warner made 2 hundreds. Yes Michael Clarke and his cricketing doppelganger Steven Smith also made centuries. Smith made 214 undefeated runs in the match. But Kohli's runs came against a very good off spinner bowling on a pitch tailor made for him, a genuinely quick, accurate left arm paceman, and two excellent fast bowlers who reverse swung the ball both ways. Against this attack, on this Adelaide pitch, Kohli's mastery was a sight for the Gods.
The ball before he got out, India needed 60 runs in 16.5 overs. Lyon did drop that ball short, but it was towards the end of the over, and Kohli had Karn Sharma at the other end. I wonder, whether Kohli will wake up tomorrow morning wondering if he should have tried to take to easy single instead of taking on the deep mid-wicket fielder. Until then, Kohli had scored 41 in 30 balls after reaching his hundred without putting a foot wrong. Pakistani great Inzamam Ul Haq had the uncanny ability to play exactly the right shot to each ball even as he tried to push the scoring rate along. Kohli, a master of the limited overs run chase, has this ability too. Of his 175th delivery of the day, his judgment failed him.
Could India have held out? Should India have shut shop? They didn't have the means to hold out. Not after Rohit Sharma was out. Rohit played the perfect foil to the marauding Kohli, holding his end up. He did so for 37 minutes in a stand of 35. But once he fell, unable to keep a leaping Lyon special away from the fielders, it was victory or bust.
An old fashioned Test fan might wonder about a Test lost when it might have been saved. No matter, I say. The age demands belligerence. Kohli provided it.
For a while, it looked as though India's stand-in captain and stand-in wicketkeeper might take India to an improbable win. I wonder what India's veteran wicketkeeper-batsman captain would have made of that. Imagine what Kohli might have said. "Here you go skipper, I made two hundreds, and pulled off the highest successful chase in the 130 year history of the Adelaide Oval. Your replacement played a crucial hand too. Now you can take my spot as captain, and Saha's spot as keeper. No pressure!"
It wasn't to be. 364 turned out to be 50 runs too many. Had India conceded runs at Australia's rate, they would have ended up with 7 runs more than Australia in the match. India batted 14 overs more than Australia did at Adelaide. It is a measure of how poor their bowling was, that they still lost by 48 runs.
No matter. Rohit Sharma is a readily available scapegoat. And Virat Kohli is a batsman of rare ability.