Australia vs. India 3rd Test Winners and Losers
Australia clinched their four-match Test series with India on Tuesday as the sides battled to a draw in the third Test in Melbourne that leaves the hosts with an unassailable 2-0 lead heading into the final Test in Sydney next week.
Though this encounter at the MCG ended in a stalemate, it was a contest packed full of storylines, drama and headlines.
There was Steve Smith's ongoing excellence with the bat, Virat Kohli's sublime hundred, Kohli's feud with Mitchell Johnson, Ajinkya Rahane's stunning innings, India's awful fielding, Mohammed Shami's wayward showing, Shane Watson's ongoing malaise, Australia's tentative second-innings declaration and the news of MS Dhoni's retirement from Test cricket with immediate effect.
That's quite an array of talking points from a drawn Test.
Across the following slides, we examine the winners and losers from the third match of the series in Melbourne.
Winner: Virat Kohli's Bat and Desire to Lead
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Virat Kohli clearly loves playing against the Australians.
With his third hundred of the series and the fifth Test century of his career against Australia (he has nine in total), the Indian superstar took his Test record against the Aussies to 1,083 runs from just 11 matches at an average of 57.00.
In characteristic fashion, his first-innings hundred in Melbourne was a sparkling exhibition of strokeplay, mixed with tenacity and trademark aggression in the face of a high-quality bowling attack. Even the ferocious Mitchell Johnson was put to the sword by Kohli.
And with MS Dhoni's sudden retirement from Test cricket, the 26-year-old will take over as captain for the fourth Test in Sydney (just as he did for Dhoni's absence in Adelaide), which is a position we expect him to hold onto for the years to come.
Loser: Virat Kohli's Mouth
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Alongside his stunning talent, Virat Kohli also has a character that as pugnacious as they come. He's combative, passionate and tightly strung—the sort of qualities that drive him to both excellence and confrontation.
That was evident on Day 3 of the third Test in Melbourne when the star batsman became involved in a heated battle with Mitchell Johnson and a number of his Australian team-mates.
Incensed by Johnson's throw at the stumps off his own bowling that hit Kohli inside his crease, an argument quickly ensued between the pair that needed intervention from the umpires to quell the situation.
What followed was a day of tension and verbal barbs, a situation that looked as if it brought the best out of Kohli.
But the Indian came out of the incident looking almost childish when he angrily spoke of Johnson and the Australian players in his press conference.
Per ESPN Cricinfo, the batsman said:
"I was really annoyed with him hitting me with the ball, and I told him that's not on. 'Try and hit the stumps next time, not my body.' You have got to send the right message across. I am not there to take to some unnecessary words or chats from someone. I am going there to play cricket, back myself. There's no good reason that I should respect unnecessarily some people when they are not respecting me.
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And he continued, reiterating that he had no respect for Johnson:
"I respect quite a few of them, but someone who doesn't respect me I have no reason to respect him. There were words in Adelaide as well where they said, 'No unnecessary respect for him.' I said, 'I don't need it. I am out here to play cricket, not to hear anyone's respect. As long as I am scoring runs, I am happy with it. If you like it, good. If you don't, I am not bothered.' I don't really need to care about what they think as far as respecting me or me respecting them is concerned. I have got a nice friendship with a few of them. Friendly chats, but someone who is not backing off, someone who is saying anything that comes to mouth I have no reason to respect him.
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Such statements weren't completely unexpected from as personality like Kohli. But though he might have won the battle, he lost the war.
Turning an on-field argument that occurred during a tense day into excessive indignation and public outcry left the 26-year-old looking like the more immature party in the saga.
Winner: Steve Smith
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With the bat in hand, Steve Smith can do no wrong at present.
After hundreds in the first two Tests in Adelaide and Brisbane, the stand-in captain recorded a memorable 192 in the third Test in Melbourne and eventually took his series tally to 581 runs at an average of 145.25.
Again, the most impressive aspect to Smith's unrelenting accumulation of runs at the MCG was that his innings commenced in difficult circumstances, as Australia fell from 115-1 to 216-5 while he set about building his rescue act.
As he's done before, the 25-year-old worked brilliantly with Australia's lower order, punishing the Indian bowlers to all parts of the ground and steering his team to a dominant first-innings total of 530.
Once derided for his idiosyncratic technique, Smith's Test average current sits proudly at 50.38.
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Loser: Mohammed Shami
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How often have we been here before with Indian fast bowlers?
It's a path that's all too familiar.
When Mohammed Shami burst onto the scene against the West Indies in late 2013, he excited onlookers everywhere with his lively pace and ability to sharply reverse swing the ball.
But that all feels a long time ago now. Just as it once did for Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel and Irfan Pathan before him.
In Melbourne, Shami's speeds were down and his radar was way off—too full, too short, too wide.
Though he claimed six wickets for the match, he conceded 230 runs and, in the first innings, let them go at almost five runs per over.
Frankly, we've seen this pattern too many times before.
Winner: City of Melbourne
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One of the more notable storylines that has run through this series between Australia and India has been the consistently sparse crowds seen at the grounds, particularly in Brisbane, where only 44,264 fans attended the match over its four days.
But that changed in Melbourne, a city world-renowned for its love of sport.
Day 1 alone (Boxing Day) saw almost 70,000 Melbournians take in the action at the MCG and, in all, 194,481 attended the match over its five days.
Of course, the match is greatly aided by its traditional Boxing Day scheduling and the sheer size of the colossal MCG, but once again the city of Melbourne showed why its the sporting capital of Australia with its unrivalled interest in the game.
Loser: Shane Watson
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In the lead-up to this third Test in Melbourne, ESPN Cricinfo's Brydon Coverdale summed up Shane Watson ever so neatly:
"A decade later (after his Test debut in 2005), variety is still the best word to describe Watson's offerings. He has batted in every position from 1 to 7. He has opened the bowling, has been used as first change, second change, third change, fourth change and fifth change. He has played 54 Tests since his debut, and missed 56. He has served as Australia's 44th Test captain. He has been everything and nothing.
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It's true: Across 10 years in Test cricket, Watson has a Test batting average of 35.49 and only 71 wickets. For a player of his talent—a phrase used all too often when describing the all-rounder—those figures are nowhere near what they should be.
And yet again, the third Test at the MCG saw more of the same; those unfulfilled starts with the bat and spells of bowling that, while accurate, contained little to no threat. In fact, scores of 52 and 17 and figures of 1-for-65 and 0-for-14 was perhaps the most "Watson" performance you could hope to see.
The underachievement, it seems, will never end.
Winner: Ajinkya Rahane
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There's so much to like about Ajinkya Rahane as an Indian batsman: He has a classic technique, he's a free-scorer, his strokes look so effortless and he's got Virat Kohli's steel without the excessively combative personality.
But there's one aspect to Rahane's play that's more important than any other: He makes runs overseas.
In 12 Tests away from home, the stylish right-hander now has 1,018 runs at an average of 48.47. Included in that tally are three brilliant hundreds and a stunning 96. And they're knocks that have been completed in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia—the four toughest places in the world for an Indian batsman to go.
Here in Melbourne, Rahane joined Kohli at the crease when MS Dhoni's successor was rattling along smoothly on 26 from 42 balls.
Both men ended up making spectacular hundreds. But Rahane got there first. In just 127 balls.
He finished with 147 from just 171 deliveries to show his class away from home once again.
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