KL Rahul suffers controversial dismissal as Virat Kohli gets out cheaply, India make poor start

Virat Kohli’s poor run with the bat continued on Friday while KL Rahul was dismissed in a rather contentious manner as India lost four early wickets after opting to bat in the first Test against Australia in Perth. Kohli, a run machine when it comes to Tests in Australia, was bounced out by senior pacer Josh Hazlewood, getting caught by Usman Khawaja in the slip region for 5 as a result.

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Rahul would then be caught-behind off Mitchell Starc’s bowling shortly before lunch, although the senior batter was visibly unhappy after on-field umpire Richard Kettleborough having to overturn his original decision of ‘Not Out’.

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The visitors, who had recently been whitewashed 0-3 by New Zealand at home, were reduced to 51/4 at lunch on the opening day at the Optus Stadium with talismanic wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant batting on 10 and Dhruv Jurel on 4.

Kohli’s early dismissal in Perth on Friday was his latest failure, with the Indian batting superstar having registered scores of 0, 70, 1, 17, 4 and 1 in his last six Test outings.

Both Kohli and skipper Rohit Sharma, who missed the Perth Test for the birth of his son with pacer Jasprit Bumrah taking over the role temporarily, are under pressure to regain their form with a few big k knocks in the marquee series against Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

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Kohli wasn’t the only batter departing early though; opener Yashasvi Jaiswal as well as No 3 batter Devdutt Padikkal departed for ducks, the latter caught by wicketkeeper Alex Carey off Hazlewood’s bowling in his 23rd delivery.

Rahul, who had been benched after his twin failure in the first Test against New Zealand in Bengaluru, was starting to mount a solid fightback amid the flurry of wickets and had hit three crisp boundaries when Starc and the Australians appealed loudly for caught-behind in the 23rd over.

The ball was close to Rahul’s outside edge while the latter was looking to defend a length ball across the stump, with Snickometer confirming a nick. The wicketkeeper-batter, however, insisted his bat had hit the pad at the same time and was the reason behind the spike on Snicko.

Watch the dismissal here:

"His pad and bat are not together at that point in time as the ball passes.

"It's (bat hitting pad) after, in fact, the ball passes the edge. Does Snicko pick up the sound of the bat hitting the pad?

"We're assuming (Snicko) may be the outside edge of the bat but that may not… pic.twitter.com/hvG0AF9rdo

— 7Cricket (@7Cricket) November 22, 2024

For the hosts, senior pacers Starc and Hazlewood collected a couple of wickets each while building pressure on the visitors through a series of dot balls and using the extra bounce to their advantage.

Earlier, the visitors opted to hand maiden Test caps to all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy and Harshit Rana, shoring up their pace department in the process while also extending their batting order with the former’s inclusion. Additionally, Washington Sundar was picked as the lone spinner, resulting in both Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja getting benched.

Explained | Why India handed debuts to Reddy and Rana in Perth, picked Sundar over Ashwin, Jadeja

Padikkal, additionally, made only his second Test appearance after his debut against England in Dharamsala earlier this year, replacing the injured Shubman Gill at No 3.