Here's What India Did Wrong In Brisbane

Often, cricket games could boil down to one big moment. Win that moment, and you win the game. Lately, India has let go off many such moments in Test cricket. And a lot of those moments had to do with dismissing the opposition’s tail-end.

Each time, MS Dhoni has had a ready response to why he'd failed. Explaining the Brisbane loss, Dhoni said it was "20 bad minutes" here and there that cost them the game.

Let's take a look at what India were doing when they had a chance to finish off Australia in Brisbane. This was the moment Brad Haddin got out—the first 20 minutes of Mitchell Johnson's innings. How did India fare?

Johnson's weakness, as with many left-handers, happens to be full deliveries angling away around the off-stump. The key was to keep him engaged in that area early on. Instead, Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav sprayed the short stuff on him. Predictably, it didn't work. Had Dhoni done his homework on Johnson? It didn't seem so, looking at the line of attack he chose in those crucial minutes. This is when the game turned decisively. India kept bouncing Johnson, who kept smashing them.

It wasn't bad luck, as Dhoni seems to insist. It was bad thinking—a salient feature of Dhoni's leadership in Test cricket away from home. It's been a habit with him to let these "20 minute" periods snatch games from his hands.

2011, Melbourne. Australia were effectively 217-8 and an unlikely Indian win looked certain. That is when Dhoni pushed his field back and treated the tail-enders like they were Bradman on a clear Leeds afternoon.

Dhoni’s paranoia allowed Mike Hussey to add 74 with numbers 10 and 11. In the first innings, Australia’s last two had scrapped for 42—that’s a match total of 116. India’s margin of defeat—122 runs—showed the worth of those runs and the folly of Dhoni’s defensiveness.  

On two other occasions in that series, Dhoni’s team failed to seize the day after they had Australia by the throat. They were 3-37 in Sydney and 3-84 in Adelaide. Each time, India allowed an out-of-form Ricky Ponting to score a hundred. Ponting was sputtering towards retirement. That series refuelled him for another year. These were key moments that, if controlled better, would have taken India far from the eventual ignominy of the 0-4 defeat.

Let’s go further back, to Lord’s in the summer of 2011. India could have won this game. England, 62-5 in the second, staring down the barrel. Hereon, not only could India not separate Matt Prior and Stuart Broad, they also allowed England to score at five an over on an overcast day. England improved their score by 207 runs. The difference made by one partnership reflected in the margin of victory: 196 runs.

It happened again in Nottingham, where England’s last two took them to 221 (they were 124-8). In contrast, India’s last five scored 21. And that’s how the series was lost.

In 2014, again in Nottingham, India allowed the last-wicket pair of James Anderson and Joe Root to add 198—a Test record. It showed that India hadn't improved this aspect of this game in three years. Anderson nearly became the first No. 11 to smash a Test hundred—the key word being smash.  It’s not every day you have the privilege of seeing a No. 11 hit 17 boundaries. It shines the spotlight on India’s inability to bowl yorkers—or to maintain consistency of any kind of length that keeps batsmen under pressure.

We saw these scenes repeat in Brisbane last week. Sure, India had their share of bad umpiring decisions and batting collapses and the customary drops in the slips. But it was criminally bad tactics that allowed Australia to double their score after the fall of the seventh wicket.

Australia, 247-7 at Brad Haddin’s fall, added 258 in just 48 more overs. Mounting the assault was Johnson with a 93-ball 88—possibly the best counter-attacking Test innings you’ll see all winter. Johnson’s innings was the differentiator in Brisbane—a high-impact knock scored at a quick pace.

There’s a growing mass of Indian Test defeats from Lord’s to Brisbane, and they pay testimony to Dhoni and India’s willingness to crawl when nobody’s asking them to even bend.

When we combine this strategic ineptitude with India’s tendency for collapses and dropping slip catches, beating Australia this season would be like trying to contain Bradman on a clear Leeds afternoon.